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2010 edition. These accounts have been selected to provide the best available overall portrait of an evolving situation. Please note that some information may be dated and that media accounts rarely provide full, or always accurate, technical information.
Fatal thirst is a suspect as fungus attacks bats
By Brian Nearing, Staff Writer, Thursday, December 16, 2010ALBANY -- The mysterious fungus that has killed more than a million bats since appearing four years ago in a Schoharie County cave may be damaging bats' delicate wings so badly during hibernation that the animals are literally dying of thirst.
New research published by the U.S. Geological Survey found that white- nose fungus, distinguished by fuzzy white fungus patches on the nose and elsewhere of infected bats, appears to be destroying the delicate membrane that makes up a bat's wing, causing precious fluids to
dehydrate away. "A bat's wings are obviously critical for flying, but they also play a vital part in essential functions such as body temperature, blood pressure, water balance and blood and gas circulation and exchange," said Carol Meteyer, a pathologist with USGS National Wildlife Health Center and a lead author of the research,The study examined nearly 200 bats that had died from white-nose syndrome and found the cold-loving, cave-dwelling fungus, which originates in Europe, but is not fatal to native bats there, was essentially digesting delicate wing tissues, and possibly causing unsustainable dehydration in hibernating bats, forcing them to wake up during the winter to find water.
The fungus strikes bats while they are gathered in large numbers in caves during hibernation. Earlier theories have suggested that infected bats, which also lose precious fat reserves, were waking up from hunger in a fruitless winter search for insects. The fungus first appeared in Schoharie County during the winter of 2006, and has since spread to 11 states. Researchers have not been able to find a cure.
"This fungus is amazingly destructive -- it digests, erodes, and invades the skin -- particularly the wings -- of hibernating bats," said Meteyer. "The ability of this fungus to invade bats' wing skin is unlike that of any known skin fungal pathogen in land mammals."
Healthy wings are essential to bat survival, said study co-author Paul Cryan, a USGS bat ecologist at the Fort Collins Science Center. "Wings damaged by the fungus may not always look so bad to the naked eye, but under the microscope things get ugly fast ... What we propose is that thirst, and maybe not always hunger, is driving these arousals. Unusual thirst during hibernation may result from water essentially leaking out of wings damaged by the fungus."
The bat study can be read online at http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7007/8/135
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Plan to fight disease fatal to 1 million bats
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, November 29, 2010The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is drafting a plan to combat the spread of a disease that has killed more than 1 million bats
nationally, but so far the best advice remains – keep out.“The unfortunate truth is we don’t have a lot we can do to manage this disease,” said Jeremy Coleman, the service’s national white-nose syndrome coordinator.
Coleman said scientists don’t know what’s killing bats in large numbers, but the agency characterizes the threat as the worst wildlife health crisis in memory.
The disease is associated with the fungus Geomycesdestructans, which shows up as white patches on muzzles and wings of affected bats, according to wildlife service information. Affected bats lack sufficient body fat to survive hibernation and often exhibit strange behavior, such as flying during cold weather.
Coleman said there is no way to stop bats from spreading the fungus to one another, but humans can avoid contributing to the problem. While some cave explorers dispute the assertion that people can carry the fungus from cave to cave, the potential loss of entire bat species is reason enough to steer clear of caves and abandonedmines, he said.
There are more than 100 agencies working on the plan, which has been released for public comment through Dec. 26, Coleman said. Many aspects of the plan that won’t be affected by comments, such as creation of a database, are being done during the review, he said. The database will include biological data and geospatial information specific to the investigation and monitoring of the syndrome, he said.
Once the comment period closes, Coleman said, a final version will be written to reflect suggestions, and federal agencies will begin implementing the plan. Though called a “final” plan, it will not be static, he said.
To help slow the spread of the disease, agencies have closed nearly all caves on public lands, said Chuck Bitting, geologist for the Buffalo National River.
Five or six caves along the Buffalo are still open to the public, but another 350 or so are closed, Bitting said. The open caves are at Lost Valley and Buffalo Point, he said.
Cave closings have caused a decline in visits from recreational explorers, a trend seen nationwide, Bitting said. Fitton Cave, the park’s most popular, historically saw about 800 visitors a year, based on the average number of permits issued, he said.
Now only a few researchers are allowed into Fitton Cave, Bitting said.
Devil’s Den State Park near West Fork in Washington County closed its caves in mid-April but hasn’t seen a decline in visitors to the park overall, said Monte Fuller, park superintendent. Park employees are taking the opportunity to educate the public on how bats affect them, Fuller said.
Bats eat a wide variety of insects, Coleman said, including mosquitoes and pests that eat crops.
Most people understand the need to close the caves, and few cancel their trips because they can’t explore them, Fuller said.
White-nose syndrome hasn’t been found in Arkansas but has been documented in western Oklahoma, Missouri and Tennessee. Bitting said he’s not ready to say it’s inevitable that the disease will spread to Arkansas.
The fungus thrives in cold conditions, so it may be that Arkansas is far enough south that the effects won’t be as widespread, Bitting said. It appears that bats can carry the white-nose syndrome fungus without showing “ full-blown white-nose symptoms,” he said.
“Basically dying in large numbers is one of the symptoms,” he said.
Coleman said he’s hopeful there’s a boundary for the spread of the disease, which could explain cases where the fungus has been found without a corresponding die-off of bats. Because cavers and researchers are on the lookout for the fungus, it may be that it’s being discovered earlier, he said, and that it takes longer for the bats to die than initially thought.
After all, cave temperatures are fairly standard and the fungus thrives at 59 degrees or below, Coleman said.
The closures make it illegal to access the caves, but don’t extend to private property, which is where the majority of caves are, Bitting said. Arkansas is home to about a third of at least 10,000 known caves in the Ozarks, Bitting said.
About 15 percent to 25 percent of the caves in the Ozarks are on public land, he said.
Experienced explorers may have differing opinions on the closures, but they’re not dismissing the threat of the disease, said Terry Mitchell, president of the Boston Mountain Grotto of the National Speleological Society.
“We’re observing cave closures, which of course is a matter of not breaking the law,” Mitchell said.
Mitchell said members of his organization are following procedures recommended by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which means sanitizing equipment and gear used in caves.
Visitors to Blanchard Springs Caverns north of Mountain View in Stone County may also have to sanitize boots or other equipment before going on a tour, said Tony Guinn, visitor information specialist with the U.S. Forest Service.
Guinn said before every tour, visitors are asked whether they’ve been in a cave since 2000. If the answer is yes, she said, they are asked if they are wearing or carrying anything that they took in the other cave. If so, then the items are either sanitized or must be left in the visitor’s vehicle.
Other than Blanchard Springs Caverns, caves and abandoned mines in the Ozark-St. Francis National Forest are closed, according to service’s website.
Guinn said that Blanchard Springs has a section where bats hibernate, but that area is closed from Labor Day to Memorial Day.
A brief education on whitenose syndrome also greets visitors to Cosmic Cavern, said Bonnie Curnock, an interpretive guide at the private cave north of Berryville. Curnock said commercial caves typically have too much human traffic to be inviting to hibernating bats. Still, the disease is a concern for anyone with any interest in caves, she said.
Lack of understanding and misinformation about white-nose syndrome are also problems, Curnock said. Some people mistakenly think humans can contract whitenose syndrome, which isn’t true, she said.
Mitchell said he’s not an expert on the disease but has read a lot of research, including some reports about whitenose syndrome in Europe. The reports indicate the fungus is widespread, but there aren’t cases with high numbers of bat deaths, he said.
Curnock said serious cavers follow the decontamination procedures to the letter, but amateurs may just wander into a cave, even though it’s closed. Even if people do manage to stay out of caves, she said, it won’t stop the spread of the disease because bats are everywhere.
“You can’t shut the planet down,” she said.
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Bat Genocide
National Geographic Magazine. December 2010
By David Qaummen; Photography by Stephen Alvarez
On the outskirts of Madison, Wisconsin, stands a low brick structure equipped with ventilation scrubbers and surrounded by a tall chain-link fence: the Tight Isolation Building of the U.S. Geological Survey's National Wildlife Health Center (NWHC), a federal research facility devoted to combating wildlife diseases. Inside, a cinder block corridor circuits the Animal Isolation Wing, passing a series of well-sealed experiment rooms, each visible through a thick window. One room is furnished with sawdust and burrowlike pipes to approximate the habitat for prairie dogs involved in a vaccine trial against Yersinia pestis, the organism that causes plague. In another room zebra finches in birdcages are playing a role in research toward a vaccine for West Nile virus. Two rooms are darkened, for the comfort of hibernating bats. The first contains normal animals of the species Myotis lucifugus, commonly called little brown bats. They are the controls. The second dark room houses little browns exposed to Geomyces destructans, a filamentous white fungus of unknown origin that first appeared among North American bats in 2006. In just four years, it has hit hibernating bat populations in New York, Vermont, and a growing list of other states and Canadian provinces more lethally than Yersinia pestis hit the peasants of medieval France.
David S. Blehert, a microbiologist at NWHC, leads the laboratory study of this nefarious fungus. He enters the second dark room wearing Tyvek coveralls, rubber boots, latex gloves, a red-filtered headlamp, and a respirator. Moving quietly to avoid rousing the animals, he approaches a large glass-fronted cabinet in which sits a small, screened cage of bats. The cabinet is a florist's refrigerator, adopted by Blehert because hibernating bats, like cut lilies, do best at low temperatures and high humidity. Blehert peers into the cooler, checking the bats for evidence of fungal growth around their muzzles or on their wings. White fuzz on the snout, which looks like rime on the beard of a skier, is a signal that the bat may be infected; it's also the source of the label "white-nose syndrome" for this affliction.
No sign of change, Blehert tells me back in the locker room. No mortalities so far, and no visible fungus. But the experiment is still in an early stage.
How does this fungus kill the bats? "That we don't know," he says. "It is, I believe, the first disease ever characterized specifically targeting a hibernating animal." So its mode of lethality may be different from anything science has ever seen. And that's only one of the unknowns. [Read more]
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Research on bat disease continues
By Cecelia Mason, West Virginia Public BroadcastingNovember 16, 2010 · Researchers have been working hard since 2006 to prevent a new disease, White Nose Syndrome, from decimating the country’s bat populations. White Nose Syndrome was first discovered in New York State and by 2009 it was found in four caves in Pendleton County. It has since spread to six additional West Virginia counties. White Nose Syndrome causes hibernating bats to starve to death and its symptoms include a white fungus that grows on the bat’s nose, and other parts of its body.
The West Virginia Division of Natural Resources will go out early next year to assess how much damage the disease has done to the state’s bat population. Biologists are especially concerned about two endangered species, the Virginia Big Eared and Indiana bats. “To date we have not seen a Virginia Big Eared Bat with White Nose Syndrome even caves where other bats have White Nose,” Craig Stihler, DNR wildlife biologists, said.
“Indiana Bats seem to be less affected than other species, perhaps because they are in a little drier portion of the cave.” Stihler said the most affected species is the most common one, the Little Brown Bat. It’s believed White Nose Syndrome was brought to the U.S. from Europe and research continues on how to prevent it from killing more bats. Researchers are looking for chemicals to treat the fungus that cause White Nose Syndrome. “The biggest issue we have if we find a way to treat the fungus how do we treat bats in the wild,” Stihler said. White Nose Syndrome kills hibernating bats by causing them to starve.
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Feds Criticized in Fight Against Killer Bat Disease
By Brandon Keim, Wired Online, 12 Nov 2010
As an apocalyptic bat disease threatens to spread across the United States, the stage is set for a showdown between the federal government and environmentalists who feel enough isn’t being done to stop it.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released the second draft version on Oct. 27 of its national response plan for White Nose Syndrome, which has killed more than a million cave-dwelling bats since emerging four years ago.
On the same day, the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity issued a press release excoriating the plan, calling it a “slow-motion response” to a disease that’s already destroyed a major part of the animal kingdom in the eastern U.S., and shows no sign of slowing.
“You have to pick a model [for response] that’s appropriate to the situation,” said Mollie Matteson, a conservation advocate at the Centers for Biological Diversity. “I’m afraid this one will be perfected by the time White Nose Syndrome reaches California.”
Caused by a fungus that eats bat tissues and wakes them from hibernation too soon, White Nose Syndrome (WNS) has spread to 14 states and two Canadian provinces since the first cases were reported in 2006 in upstate New York. That state and Vermont have lost more than 90 percent of their bats, threatening populations with total extinction or, at best, a centuries-long recovery process.
The discovery in Oklahoma earlier this year of Geomyces destructans, the fungus linked to WNS, raised the nightmare possibility of the disease spreading west as well as south and east, conceivably exterminating most if not all 22 species of cave-dwelling, hibernating U.S. bats in the next few decades. It’s more than an animal tragedy: Those bats are major consumers of insects, filling a nighttime ecological niche shared by birds in the daytime. The loss could translate to booms of crop-eating insect pests, causing millions of dollars annually in agricultural damage and increased pesticide use.
Researchers and wildlife managers were caught off-guard by the outbreak, which is unprecedented in known mammal history. A handful of state biologists, federal researchers and conservationists scrambled to respond, tracking the disease and conducting basic research on shoestring budgets. The USFWS has coordinated the effort, and the draft plan represents the next, more mature stage of the fight.
For now, it’s largely an organizational document, stating priorities and establishing a framework for coordinating activities among dozens of federal and state agencies involved in a large-scale response. The plan also identifies seven key areas of action, including data sharing, developing reliable diagnostic tools, research on the fungus itself, and investigations of how WNS spreads and might be treated.
Each action area is universally regarded by white nose researchers and conservationists as important. But there is little specific detail in the plan, now two years in the making, or about how these actions will be pursued or funded. The plan “only provides a conceptual framework for responding to the disease,” said the Center for Biological Diversity in its press release. It “makes no concrete recommendations for research and management.”
According to Jeremy Coleman, the WNS syndrome coordinator for the Fish and Wildlife Service, such broad outlines had to come before specifics. “It’s important to lay out the groundwork,” he said. After a 60-day comment period, the draft plan will be revised. When that’s finalized next year, a detailed “implementation plan” will follow. “We’ve been doing all these other pieces that are critical to actual implementation,” said Coleman.
“As far as the plan goes, it’s fine,” said Nina Fascione, executive director of Bat Conservation International, a nonprofit conservation group that worked with the USFWS on developing the draft plan. “It’s just not that descriptive.” Fascione noted the inherent complexity and slowness of coordinating multiple government agencies, saying the proof of the plan will be in its implementation stage.
But Matteson said the federal effort doesn’t reflect the urgency of the disease, comparable in magnitude only to Chytridiomycosis, a disease that’s caused die-offs and extinctions in 30 percent of all amphibian species. “They’ve failed to put the crisis in that light,” she said.
The Center for Biological Diversity wants the USFWS to immediately declare a national wildlife emergency, develop a plan for closing caves to people who might pick up the fungus and spread it elsewhere, and dedicate $10 million for WNS funding in the next agency budget.
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Feds, NM agencies close some caves to protect bats
SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN, Nov. 9, 2010 8:32 PM ETALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Federal and state land managers in New Mexico have teamed up to limit the spread of a fungus that has wiped out entire bat colonies in the eastern United States.
Officials with the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service, the Forest Service Southwest region and the state Game and Fish Department will be enacting partial closures for some caves and abandoned mines on public lands in New Mexico in response to white-nose syndrome.
First spotted in New York in 2006, the disease has been confirmed in dozens of hibernating locations in Canada and the U.S., ranging as far south as Tennessee and west to Oklahoma.
While there have been no reports of the disease or the fungus that causes it in New Mexico, biologists believe it could appear in southwestern bat populations as early as this winter based on previous patterns and rates of spread.
BLM Deputy State Director Bill Merhege said the agencies along with the caving community and cave researchers need to take precautions to protect New Mexico's 28 bat species, which are important pollinators and vital in controlling insects.
"We had to do something real quick or we were going to be forced to do total closures. We wanted to head that off and do something proactive," Merhege said Monday night during a meeting with cavers and agency officials.
The plan is designed so that it can be amended as more science about the bats, their roosts and white-nose syndrome is collected.
New Mexico officials are targeting caves and abandoned mines with significant bat roosts. Only approved researchers and others will be allowed in closed caves if they have properly decontaminated their clothing and gear.
The bats themselves are thought to be the primary way the disease is spread, but biologists say it's possible people can inadvertently spread the disease by carrying spores on their clothing, shoes or packs.
Developed caves such as Carlsbad Caverns National Park will not be affected by the closures, but officials there are considering a screening process for visitors, much like the one enacted at Mammoth Cave in Kentucky.
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Bat population threatened by mysterious disease
Scientists are monitoring the mammals to try to determine what causes white-nose syndrome and how to combat it.
By Laurence Hammack, Roanoke Times, Nov. 7, 2010On a balmy October evening, deep in the woods of Craig County, Wil Orndorff stood waiting at the mouth of a cave.
"We're hoping the warm weather will bring them out tonight," he said.
"Them" being the bats.
About 30 feet inside, a team of researchers had strung a net to capture the bats as they flew out at dusk to forage for food. The goal: to determine how many have white-nose syndrome, a disease threatening entire bat populations along the East Coast.
More than a million bats have died so far in the Northeast, where the disease was discovered by an upstate New York caver in 2006, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
To get a better idea of what's happening in Virginia, scientists are monitoring bats in the caves where they hibernate -- and where the disease can awaken them prematurely and then starve them to death.
On this night, the bats were not cooperating.
It must be too windy for them to come out, Rick Reynolds, a biologist with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, mused after more than an hour passed without a single netting.
So Reynolds and Orndorff, a karst protection coordinator with the state's Department of Conservation and Recreation, squeezed through a narrow opening and followed the cavern's winding route to where it abruptly dropped into a black hole.
"We were hoping they would be cooperative and we wouldn't have to do this," Reynolds said as he slipped into a cave-climbing harness. "But we have to go in after them."
He and Orndorff then rappelled about 25 feet down the cliff, the glow from their head lamps quickly giving way to pitch darkness. About a half-hour later, Reynolds pulled himself back up, one hand gripping a black plastic garbage bag from which angry squeaks could be heard.
Back at the cave's entrance, two other team members had set up a processing station on a folding table.
"We have work," Reynolds told them.
Inside the bag were about 50 little brown bats, a species that resembles a winged mouse. Smaller paper bags held several bats apiece, each tightly shut with a clothespin. Lying on the cave's rock floor, the bags vibrated from the beating wings inside.
"Hi, little brown," Karen Francl, a biology professor at Radford University, said as she pulled one out and cupped it gently in both hands. The bat bared its tiny teeth and bit Francl's gloved finger.
Unharmed, Francl measured the bat's forearm, inspected its wings and weighed it on a set of digital scales. A bat's weight this time of year, when it should be fattening up for hibernation, is a crucial clue in the search for symptoms.
White-nose syndrome -- named for the white markings it leaves on an infected bat's snout, ears and wings -- is a fungus that irritates the victims' skin to the point of rousing them from hibernation.
Awake when they shouldn't be, the bats burn off crucial body fat as they flap around the cave. Sometimes they fly outdoors during the day, either freezing to death or starving during their futile search for mosquitoes and moths in the dead of winter.
"It was just heartbreaking to see those little critters coming out in the snow in broad daylight," said Don Anderson, a caving enthusiast who assisted in a count in Bland County earlier this year.
A normal bat should weigh about 9 or 10 grams. Many of the ones examined by Reynolds' team last month were underweight.
"You can do better than that, little guy," Francl said after one bat tipped the scales at 6.6 grams. After inspecting the bat's wings for sores and tears caused by the fungus, Francl placed a tracking band on its forearm and then watched affectionately as it fluttered away.
To be sure, not everyone has a soft spot in their heart for bats, or a deep concern about weight loss by a flying mammal often associated with Halloween and creepiness in general.
But a steep decline in the bat population -- or even worse, the extinction of entire species -- would mean more mosquitoes and other flying pests. One little brown bat can eat up to 1,000 mosquito-sized insects in an hour; a pregnant bat typically eats the equivalent of her body weight in bugs each night, according to Bat Conservation International.
It's too soon to say just how bad the outbreak is in Virginia, Reynolds said. But clearly, the disease is spreading rapidly.
Since the state's first case of white-nose syndrome was confirmed inside Breathing Cave in Bath County last year, the disease has been spotted in 19 more caves, extending all the way south to Smyth County.
The U.S. Forest Service has closed all caves and abandoned mines on its land to prevent cavers and others from spreading the disease. Evidence suggests the fungus is mostly transmitted bat to bat, Reynolds said.
Many underground expeditions on private land have resumed, said Anderson, president of the New River Valley Grotto caving club. Most cavers take care to clean and disinfect their boots and clothing, so as not to carry the fungus with them to an unaffected cave, Anderson said. Scientists believe the disease poses no threat to humans.
Of the 200 to 300 bats Reynolds observed on the walls of Shires Cave in Craig County the night of Oct.26, only one had the telltale white fungus on its nose. But that sign usually doesn't appear until the bats are well into their hibernacula.
By February, when researchers will venture back into the caves, they should have a better idea of how many bats are dying. Anecdotal reports are grim, with bat colonies in some Virginia caves down from thousands to hundreds.
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Artificial cave proposed to protect bats from fungal disease
Conservation group seeks to win grant money to fund project
By Morgan Simmons, Knoxville News Sentinel, Nov. 7, 2010A fast-spreading epidemic that has killed more than 1 million bats across the northeastern U.S. has prompted an unusual proposal from one of Tennessee's leading environmental organizations.
The Tennessee chapter of The Nature Conservancy would like to build an artificial cave to safeguard hibernating bats from white-nose syndrome, a fungal disease that has experts predicting regional extinction for at least one common bat species - the little brown bat - within the next two decades.
To fund the cave, The Nature Conservancy has entered its proposal in the Pepsi Refresh online grant competition, a monthly contest for ideas that positively affect communities. If the idea garners enough public votes, Pepsi will award The Nature Conservancy $250,000 to build and outfit the artificial cave.
Public voting started Nov. 1 and continues through Nov. 30 at http://www.refresheverything.com.
Built of metal, the artificial cave would resemble an elongated dome. The main room would measure 40-by-52 feet, with a 33-foot-tall air shaft and a 6-foot-long entry tunnel. To achieve optimum benefit, the artificial cave would be buried near a natural cave where federally endangered gray bats are known to hibernate.
Last winter white-nose syndrome was found on bats in Tennessee caves for the first time. First documented in a cave in Sullivan County in upper East Tennessee, the disease already had spread westward to four more caves on the Cumberland Plateau by winter's end.
Gina Hancock, associate state director for the Tennessee chapter of The Nature Conservancy, said that in addition to potentially saving a large colony of hibernating bats, the artificial cave also would give researchers a controlled environment in which to test various disinfectants that might be used to treat the fungus.
"A lot of researchers are reluctant to test these treatments in a natural caves because of their fragile ecosystems," Hancock said. "This cave will be worth building whether we can get bats to relocate in it or not."
An artificial cave designed to house Mexican free-tailed bats was constructed on a private ranch in the Texas hill country in 1998. However, The Nature Conservancy's proposed cave in Tennessee would be the first used to combat white-nose syndrome.
With over 9,000 caves, Tennessee has plenty at stake in thwarting the disease.
Hancock said that ideally, the cave would be buried on land managed by the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, and that the project would take the cooperation of federal and non-governmental agencies like the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Bat Conservation International.
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TODD RICHMOND, Associated Press Writer, October 21, 2010MADISON, Wis. (AP) ― Wisconsin wildlife officials want emergency authorization to close caves and mines as a devastating bat disease gets nearer to the state.
Department of Natural Resources officials stress that restricting access would be a last resort in cases where landowners won't help the agency combat white-nose syndrome. But the plan has still created an uproar among commercial cave owners and spelunkers who fear the regulations could cripple their businesses.
"It's basically telling the landowner the DNR is going to overpower them. I find that disturbing," said Weston Hanke, co-owner of Eagle Cave, a commercial cave near Blue River.
White-nose syndrome has killed more than a million bats across 14 states and two Canadian provinces since 2006. A white fungus grows on the bats while they hibernate in caves and mines. Researchers believe the fungus causes the bats to wake up, consume their fat stores and starve to death.
Findings from the U.S. Geological Survey Wildlife Health Center show the fungus moves from bat to bat as well as from contaminated caves to bats.
The state DNR says long-distance jumps in the disease's spread indicate it also may be moving through contaminated caving gear and cavers' clothing. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last month closed caves on its refuge system to prevent humans from spreading the fungus.
The disease hasn't been found in Wisconsin yet, but it's close. It turned up last spring about 230 miles south of the Wisconsin-Illinois border and about 300 miles from the state's northern border. DNR officials fear an outbreak here could wipe out the state's bat population, in turn exposing crops to more insect damage.
Last month, the Natural Resources Board adopted emergency provisions to add four cave bat species to the state threatened species list and classify the white-nose fungus as an invasive species.
The Natural Resources Board is expected to vote on the new regulations Wednesday. They would allow DNR workers to enter caves and mines to search for the fungus with either permission from the owners or a warrant.
No one would be allowed to bring gear or clothing into a Wisconsin cave or mine if the equipment was used outside Wisconsin. Gear and clothes that have been used in the state must be decontaminated before they can be used in another state cave or mine. People would have to decontaminate themselves as soon as they walk out of a cave or mine.
The DNR also could ask anyone who owns a cave or mine to restrict human or bat access according to a plan developed with the agency. If the owner doesn't cooperate, the department could mandate closure. Opponents see the rules as a power grab with no scientific basis.
Hanke, whose family has run Eagle Cave for 30 years, said he rarely sees any bats in his cave and he probably wouldn't deny DNR staff if they asked to inspect the site. But he said the agency shouldn't be allowed to bully him. "I guess I'm just scared about my business. It worries me that all those years of work and sweat can go up in smoke," he said. "The DNR has more power than the police department."
John Lovaas of Woodstock, Ill., explores caves in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa. He said the rules would prevent him from bringing any gear into Wisconsin, even though nothing proves humans move the fungus. "For me it would effectively end caving in Wisconsin," he said.
Joe Klimczak is the general manager of Cave of the Mounds, which has no bats. But he said in an e-mail the post-visit decontamination requirements would shut down tours at the site near Blue Mounds. "There are far more bats living in buildings, so next the DNR may propose the closure of churches and schools," he wrote.
DNR Endangered Resources Manager Erin Crain said the rules aren't as draconian as critics think. Anyone could seek a decontamination exemption, she said, adding that cave explorers would face more extensive decontamination than tourists. She pointed to the federal cave closures as evidence restricting access is a prudent approach to slowing the disease. Closure could mean sealing off bats' access points, putting up "no trespassing" signs or gates, all at the DNR's expense, she said.
The state's 12 commercial caves have relatively few bats, she added, making it more feasible to exclude them than keep tourists out. "We have no interest in saying you can't have tours and caving here," Crain said. "If that's the way they make a living, that's the way they make their living."
The DNR has implemented some of the provisions at two caves at Calumet County's Ledge View Nature Center, a popular school field trip destination. The center allowed the DNR to relocate the caves' bats in August and seal entry points, said Ron Zharinger, a county naturalist. Still, a few bats have found ways in, he said.
This summer, the center agreed to follow the agency's requests to bar anyone wearing clothes they wore in another cave. So far no one has shown up with suspect clothing, although the center has sprayed the shoes of a half-dozen people who said they had worn them in other caves, Zharinger said.
The county wants to work with the DNR, he said, but the caves have lost something. Children used to love seeing the bats in the wild. "It's too bad that we had to resort to this," he said. "We like bats."
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Bat Disease Threatens to Close America’s Caves
by Brandon Keim | Wired Magazine | October 18, 2010
Mammoth Cave, KY/Peter Rivera, Flickr
A nightmare bat-killing disease could have an unexpected victim: America’s access to its caves.To slow the spread of a fungus that causes White Nose Syndrome, government agencies are systematically closing caves to the public.
Confronted with a disease that’s killed at least 1 million bats since 2006 and threatens some bat species with extinction, it’s an understandable and possibly necessary tactic. But it does come with a price: disconnecting Americans from a vital part of their natural heritage.
“I love taking Boy Scouts into caves, showing them what’s underground. Most say, ‘I’m going to go play videogames.’ But a few say, ‘I want more of this. I want to be a scientist.’ Where does that interest come from in the next generation, if we close the caves?” said Peter Youngbaer, White Nose Syndrome liaison for the National Speleological Society.
The Bureau of Land Management, which controls much of the nonforested public land in the western states, has taken a case-by-case approach, closing only those caves and abandoned mines that appear to be prime G. destructans habitat. However, a federal White Nose Syndrome management plan now being drafted could ultimately make blanket closings a nationwide reality.
“It will hopefully gain us more time to allow for research to come up with some kind of treatment, with something that we can do,” said Jeremy Coleman, White-Nose Syndrome coordinator for the Fish and Wildlife Service. “We don’t have a lot of time. To gain just one or two years may ultimately be nothing, or it could be the critical element that allows us to preserve species that are going extinct.”
The organized caving community has bristled at the restrictions, insisting that they follow thorough decontamination protocols and present far less of a disease-spreading risk than the bats themselves.
The initial outbreak was likely caused caused by a tourist who carried G. destructans from Europe, where bats seem resistant to the disease. After that, however, few infections have been linked to human transmission. Had public caves been closed, the course of the epidemic may not have been different.
“It would be a shame for cavers and those responsible for managing and studying caves to lose touch with caves and their environments because of simplistic and ineffective management strategies,” said National Speleological Society president Cheryl Jones. [Click the title above to read more...]
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Bat Boy Fights White Nose Syndrome
Weekly World News, September 24, 2010Bat Boy joins Bat Conservation International in the crusade against the deadly White-Nose Syndrome.
Bat Boy is taking on a serious cause to help counter the “most precipitous wildlife decline in the past century in North America”
Bat Conservation International (BCI) a leading organization working to protect and restore bats and their habitats, is joining forces with Weekly World News and its famed character Bat Boy on an effort to raise awareness and funds for the battle against White-Nose Syndrome, an affliction that has taken the lives of more than 1 million bats of six species since its discovery in 2006 and which threatens to spread across North America.
“Desperate times call for out-of-the-box measures, and a partnership with Bat Boy certainly fits that bill!,” states Susan Kwasniak, Director of Marketing for Bat Conservation International. “Bat Boy is a character with a huge following, especially among the young and eco-conscious. We’re delighted that Bat Boy is raising awareness and support to tackle this unprecedented threat to North American wildlife.”
“We’re truly delighted to be partnering up with BCI on this campaign,” states Neil McGinness, CEO of Bat Boy, LLC, parent company of the Weekly World News. “White-Nose Syndrome is a serious epidemic that deserves our attention. And when it comes to getting attention, no one holds a candle to Bat Boy.”
CLICK HERE FOR INFORMATION ON HOW TO DONATE:
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State officials put bats on threatened list
Associated Press • September 23, 2010MADISON (AP) — The state Natural Resources Board has adopted an emergency rule to classify four cave bats as threatened species before a deadly bat disease reaches Wisconsin.
The board voted 7-0 at a meeting in Wisconsin Rapids on Wednesday to add the little brown bat, the big brown bat, the eastern pipistrelle and the northern long-eared bat to the threatened list. The designation means people can’t transport, possess or disturb those species.
The move comes as a disease called white-nose syndrome sweeps across the nation, wiping out hundreds of thousands of bats. The disease turned up last spring within several hundred miles of Wisconsin’s northern and southern borders.
The board also unanimously approved an emergency rule designating the white-nose fungus an invasive species.
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State officials to consider steps to protect bats from white-nose syndrome
By Ron Seely, Wisconsin State Journal
September 20, 2010
Hoping to combat a disease that has decimated bat populations in the Eastern U.S., the state Natural Resource Board will consider steps this week to protect Wisconsin’s bats from white-nose syndrome before it reaches the state’s borders.
"We have a rare opportunity to meet an extinction threat head on and deal with it," said Department of Natural Resources Secretary Matt Frank of the measures that will be considered by the board at its meeting Wednesday. "The DNR is taking action now to slow the spread of the disease and conserve as many bats as possible, knowing a (white-nose syndrome) infection is likely."
Proposals that would make cave bats a threatened species in Wisconsin as well as make the fungus a prohibited invasive species will be considered by the board Wednesday. Bats are currently not protected in Wisconsin.
Redell has indicated he would be surprised if the disease does not turn up in Wisconsin this winter. All four of Wisconsin’s cave bat species — little brown, northern long-eared, eastern pipistrelle and big brown bats — are susceptible to the disease.
Designating the cave bats as threatened species ahead of the disease would heighten efforts to protect them, according to DNR officials. While the threatened status would allow for greater protection, the plan also calls for creating an incidental take permit that would allow bats to be killed in the event of public health concerns or in the case of building or bridge demolitions and wind energy development projects. The permits would also outline specific precautions that need to be taken to minimize impacts on bats.
By designating the fungus as a prohibited invasive species, steps can be taken to control its introduction on clothing or equipment, according to DNR officials.
----Scientists Find Drugs That May Fight Bat Disease
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: September 12, 2010BOSTON (AP) -- Scientists may have found some ways to help the nation's bats, which are being wiped out by a novel fungal disease.
Lab tests show that several drugs can fight the germ and that some antiseptics might help decontaminate areas where bats live or the shoes and hands of people who visit them, researchers reported at an infectious-diseases conference Sunday.
''Both of those are critical elements. The decontamination is in my mind the most immediate need,'' because people may be helping to spread the disease, called white-nose syndrome, said Jeremy Coleman, who heads the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's response to the problem.
Coleman had no role in the research, which was done by New York state's Department of Health in Albany, the state capital. The department's scientists helped identify the fungus as the cause of the bat die-off, first seen in Albany, about 150 miles north of New York City, in 2006.
Bats have a key role in nature -- eating and helping control mosquitoes and other insects that harm crops and carry disease. One type, the little brown bat, ''was the most common bat in the Northeast and typically the most common bat in the nation, and they've been just completely decimated,'' Coleman said. In some areas, ''we're down to 3 percent of the original population.''
More than 1 million bats have died from the fungus, which has been found as far south as Tennessee and as far west as Oklahoma. Some caves on federal land have been closed to the public to try to stem the spread, but scientists don't know how the disease is transmitted or even how it is killing the bats.
The fungus grows on the nose, wings and ears, and one theory is that it irritates these membranes, causing bats to wake often during hibernation and burn so much energy that they starve to death before spring. But there are signs the fungus is directly damaging wings, which are important for maintaining water balance and blood pressure control, Coleman said.
''It might not be as simple as they're waking up too much,'' he said.
Which is why the work by microbiologist Vishnu Chaturvedi and others at the New York state lab is so important. They wanted to find treatments in case scientists have to take drastic steps to preserve the species or specific colonies.
They tested six strains of the novel fungus against drugs already used to treat people and animals such as cats and dogs for ailments ranging from athlete's foot to life-threatening infections.
''We found that two major classes of antifungal drugs have very good activity'' against the bat germ, Chaturvedi reported Sunday in Boston at a meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.
The drugs include fluconazole, the most widely used antifungal drug, which is sold as Diflucan by Pfizer Inc. and in generic form. Four other drugs also seem highly effective, Chaturvedi said.
Researchers also screened more than 2,000 compounds and found five antiseptics that greatly inhibit the fungus.
Now comes the difficult part: how to use these tools in a safe and practical way. No one has ever tried anything quite like this before to treat a large wildlife die-off or to decontaminate areas where the animals live.
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Bat-Killing Disease Spreading, Closing Western Caves
Western Reaction
Here’s a quick rundown of where to expect closures:* U.S. Forest Service: The USFS has enacted blanket closures for all caves and abandoned mines in Colorado and Wyoming. The closure began in July and will remain in effect for one year. Officials for USFS regional offices that cover Utah, Idaho and Montana say no closures are currently in affect, but they are monitoring the situation.
* Bureau of Land Management: State BLM land managers have been instructed to examine WNS and create management plans to deal with the disease’s spread. No closures have been announced yet, but are likely to vary from state to state across the West.
* National Park Service: At this time, all NPS-overseen caves in the Western US remain unaffected by WNS-induced closures.
* State agencies: At this time, no state agencies in Western states have enacted restrictions based on the spread of WNS.
* Because the spread of WNS has happened quickly and sporadically, the status of cave closures is in flux. Depending on your location, contact local agencies or caving organizations for the latest updates. A comprehensive list of closures is maintained by the National Speleological Society.
Feds taking precautions to curb the spread of White-nose Syndrome by asking cavers to cooperate and self-police.
By Alex Strickland, 9-09-10A strange bat-killing disease discovered in a New York cave in 2006 hasn’t conclusively reached the bats of the West yet, but federal agencies are taking no chances. They’re simply closing the caves.
Effective July 27, the U.S. Forest Service issued an emergency closure of all caves and abandoned mines for one year in the area it defines as the Rocky Mountain Region, which includes Colorado and Wyoming, as well as South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas.
The disease, White-nose Syndrome or WNS, remains mysterious. Experts aren’t sure exactly how it’s spread but know that it’s linked to the death of more than a million hibernating bats in several states and Canada. It’s possible that the fungus that causes the disease can be transported on clothing and caving equipment.
Ann Froschauer, one of three people with the FWS tasked with overseeing the coordination effort from New York, said, “There is a concerted inter-agency effort with federal and state agencies and some partners – like the National Speleological Society and their members – to try to figure out what the best ways to go about this are.
“It’s very exciting to see everyone coming together on this,” she said, “but does that mean everyone will be happy with the decisions made? No, definitely not.”
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Cavers scrambling after closures
By: Harrison Keely
Thursday, Aug. 12, 2010Rachael Dimond learned the hard way.
After recruiting friends, gearing up and driving an hour to Gee Cave in Polk County, Tenn., Dimond was shocked to see an iron cage blocking the entrance.
Many amateur spelunkers in Southeast Tennessee have been asked to curtail their hobby temporarily in well-known public caves because of white nose syndrome, a mysterious disease killing off bats rapidly in northern states.
Caves in 13 states have been closed from May 21, 2009, to May 21 this year, a sign near the Gee Cave trail explained. It was only after an online search that Dimond discovered the closures have been extended for another year.
Terry McDonald, spokesman for the Cherokee National Forest, which includes the Gee Creek Wilderness Area, said the nine documented caves and 20 mine portals in the forest have been closed as a precaution to prevent any local cases of the syndrome.
Mary Miller, a wildlife biologist for the Southern district of the Cherokee National Forest, said that while the syndrome hasn’t been spotted in any of Tennessee’s national forests, it has been found in adjacent caves, sometimes in the same county.
The Forest Service is working to place notices on every closed cave, Miller added.
Dimond said that, while she’s glad action is being taken, she believes the closures are just an effort to stall for more research time.
“They’re not solving the problem,” she said. “It seems like they’re putting a lot more effort into blocking off the caves rather than trying to help the bats that are dying.”
America’s Most Common Bat Headed for Eastern Extinction
By Brandon Keim, August 5, 2010
Wired MagazineBy the time today’s toddlers graduate from high school, the most common bat in North America may have vanished altogether from the eastern United States.
Researchers combined historical population trends with mortality counts in Myotis lucifugus colonies struck by White-Nose Syndrome, an extraordinarily virulent bat disease first identified in 2006. According to their models, M. lucifugus, better known as the little brown bat, has a 99 percent chance of vanishing from the east, soon.
“If mortality and spread continue the way it has in the past four years, that’s where we get the very distressing prediction of a high chance of regional extinction in 16 to 20 years,” said Winifred Frick, a Boston University bat researcher.
Much remains to be learned about how WNS spreads, how it kills and where it came from, none of which is known for certain. Some researchers have proposed spraying caves with fungicides, but none have proved effective. Immunization is even more hypothetical. The disease is so new that scientists are only now agreeing that the fungus is likely a cause, rather than a symptom.
All that’s certain is bats are dying. More than a million have died so far, a die-off comparable to slaughters of passenger pigeons or Great Plains bison, only faster. Scientists have declared it “the most precipitous decline of North American wildlife in recorded history,” a diagnosis quantified by the new little brown bat predictions, published August 5 in Science.
“Yes, we had the empirical observations that cave floors were littered with dead bats. We knew this was a devastating problem. But nobody had quantified the impact to the populations,” said Frick. “We didn’t know what those die-offs meant to population viability as a species.”
The researchers combined long-term little brown bat population records gathered by wildlife officials in New York and Pennsylvania with their own long-term records of year-to-year variability in individual populations. This allowed them to model pre-WNS rates of breeding and natural population fluctuation.
Into this they plugged mortality rates from infected colonies. They ran the model thousands of times, the aggregated results producing probability curves of future survival. Almost invariably, the curve hits zero in a matter of decades. Even if WNS leaves survivors, the colonies will likely be so small that some inevitable coincidence — a tough winter, another disease, a run of bad luck — could wipe them out. Read more.
Fulford Cave near Eagle to close
Visitors will be barred from the popular spelunking spot for a year to protect its bats
Sarah Mausolf, smausof@vaildaily.com
Vail, Colorado • July 27, 2010
EAGLE COUNTY, Colorado — Fulford Cave will be closing for a year to protect bats from a deadly fungus, the U.S. Forest Service announced Tuesday.
The Forest Service has closed some 1,500 caves and 23,000 abandoned mines on its federal lands throughout Colorado for a year to prevent the spread of white nose syndrome.
The syndrome has already killed a million bats in the northeastern U.S. and is slowly spreading west, said Tony Dixon, deputy regional director for the Forest Service in the Rocky Mountains.
While the fungus has not yet reached Colorado, Dixon said the syndrome has been found 300 miles away in western Oklahoma. The Forest Service has closed most caves and abandoned mines on federal lands in Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, South Dakota and Wyoming to visitors, Dixon announced Tuesday.
“This is a response to mitigate and slow the spread,” he said.
Dixon said humans can pick up the fungus on their clothing. They can spread the fungus if they fail to fully clean their clothes before visiting another cave, he said. Researchers are unsure exactly how the fungus spreads but some think it spreads mainly from bat to bat.
White Nose Syndrome has a 90- to 100-percent kill rate once it infects the bats, Dixon said. One theory claims the bats are dying from starvation after the fungus stirs them from their hibernation.
Southeast of Eagle, Fulford Cave in the White River National Forest sees its share of both bat and human traffic. Richard Rhinehart, editor of Rocky Mountain Caving, a quarterly journal of Colorado caves, estimates Fulford Cave attracts roughly 3,000 spelunkers each May to October.
Dixon said the Forest Service may make some exceptions to the closure at Fulford Cave. Scientists looking to study the bats and tour guides may be able to get special permits to use the cave, he said.
Rhinehart said he's disappointed with the “blanket” closure of caves on Forest Service lands. Area cavers had been pushing for a targeted closure of caves where the bats were most at risk, he said.
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Bats Struggle to Survive
By Candace Page, Free Press Staff Writer • Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Kristen Brisee of the Vermont Fish and Wilidfe Depart
ment examines a little brown bat for white-nosesyn
drome in 2009. (Free Press file photo)A deadly disease continues to decimate Vermont's once-abundant bats.
Researchers returned late last week to a barn in Milton, a typical little brown bat summer colony where females cluster to give birth, raise their pups, and feed nightly on swarms of mosquitoes and other insects.
Five years ago, biologists counted 450 adult bats in the colony. One year ago, they counted 150. Thursday, they tallied just 51.
The species has been so hard-hit by the illness known as white-nose syndrome that Fish and Wildlife Department bat biologist Ryan Smith said it was "good news" that his team captured two healthy adults with none of the scars that indicate infection.
"It is still a functioning maternal colony. There were some pups," Smith said. "They are still holding on."
Since it first appeared in upstate New York caves in 2007, white-nose syndrome has killed more than 1 million bats in the Northeast and has spread as far west as Oklahoma. Scientists have begun to use the word "extinction" as they discuss the future of some bat species.
Vermont lost an estimated two-thirds of its cave-wintering bats in just two year. In some caves, mortality has approached 100 percent.
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Can't Get to the Bat Cave, Robin, as U.S. Seals Lairs Amid Virus Outbreak
By Arielle Fridson - Jul 23, 2010
A little brown bat showing symptoms
of White Nose Syndrome. Photographer: Greg Thompson/ U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service via Bloomberg
A little brown bat with White Nose
Syndrome hangs in the Greeley Mine in Vermont. Source: U.S. Fish & Wildlife
Service via BloombergHikers may be locked out of hundreds of caves and 30,000 abandoned mines in the U.S. West and Midwest in a government plan to protect bat from man.
The cave closings may come “as early as this week,” according to U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman Janelle Smith, and are the latest efforts to combat a disease called White Nose Syndrome that decimated bat communities in 13 states and two Canadian provinces. The disease, perhaps caused by a fungus, may spread to more states as hikers and tourists inadvertently carry spores on their clothing, Smith said.
The loss of swaths of the U.S. bat population may threaten corn and soybean crops and other parts of the U.S. agriculture and timber industries, said Mollie Matteson, a conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson, Arizona, in an interview. Bats help control insect pests, eating as much as two-thirds of their body weight per night, said Holly K. Ober, assistant professor at the University of Florida in Quincy, Florida, in a 2008 Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation document.
“It’s a catastrophic situation for bats,” said Jeremy Coleman, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who studies White Nose Syndrome in Cortland, New York. “We don’t have any tools at our ready to treat them or to control the spread, other than closing access to humans,” he said in a July 16 telephone interview.
“There are just too many unknowns” until research uncovers more information showing how to thwart the disease, Coleman said.
The fungus thought to cause the disease was first detected in New York in 2006 and may have killed more than one million bats, according to a May report from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The agency called the disease “the worst wildlife health crisis in memory.”
The disease only affects hibernating bat species, which account for a little over half of the 45 varieties in North America, said Matteson. So far nine species, including the big brown bat, are known to be affected. Some of them are now threatened with extinction, the May report said.
“It’s a huge loss in the natural pest control system,” said Ober in a telephone interview yesterday. “There has never been anything like this before in terms of a pest control population dying.”
‘Bat Death Zone’
Federally managed mines and bat caves in Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and parts of Wyoming will be closed, according to Smith, a spokeswoman for the Rocky Mountain Regional Office of the Forest Service in Denver, Colorado. Thousands of caves and mines on federal land have already been closed to “cavers,” or cave hikers, across the country.
The new closures were proposed in May when the disease appeared to be traveling into the Southwest after a case was confirmed in Western Oklahoma. The disease spread from New York into Ontario, as well as into the Midwest and the South along the Appalachian chain, Coleman said. The wildlife service now refers to this extended area as “the bat death zone.”
“We want to take action soon but we haven’t made the decision final yet,” Smith said in a July 19 telephone interview. The delay is caused by the Forest Service’s need to coordinate with the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management. All three must close sites at the same time in order to slow the rate of infection in the region, she said.
Hikers Help
Individual caves that are not home to hibernating species might be closed for one year or less, Smith said. Limiting the closures in this way is a priority for the American cave-hiking community, which has been instrumental in identifying afflicted bat populations, she said. While supportive of state efforts, cavers are reluctant to curtail their explorations.
Cavers are angry about the closures because they say it’s not proven that humans transmit the disease, according to Alan Hicks, a wildlife biologist directing a White Nose Syndrome investigation for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.
Bats, not people, are mainly responsible for spreading the disease, Hicks said in an interview. The animals fly several hundred miles over their lives so they’re capable of spreading the fungus, he said.
‘Pursuing Their Passion’
“You need to have a good reason to prevent people from pursuing their passion,” said Hicks. “You have this natural constituency of cavers that’s pro-conservation. If you start making decisions about not letting people into these caves for reasons that don’t make sense, you risk alienating these folks, who are your natural allies.”
Coleman, the federal biologist, said people travel much greater distances than bats and have the ability to infect bat populations that would otherwise never encounter the fungus.
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Cave closure order imminent
By Dennis Webb Monday, July 19, 2010Despite hopes that recent media coverage may have helped change their minds, regional U.S. Forest Service officials still appear poised to close all caves on national forests in Colorado and nearby states for a year to try to protect bats threatened by a fungus, a cave enthusiast says.
Forest Service Region 2, which includes Colorado, had been expected to announce its plans last week. An agency biologist and Richard Rhinehart, editor of Rocky Mountain Caving, had said a widespread closure order was anticipated. However, the Forest Service delayed its announcement, and Rhinehart had thought it might be reconsidering its plans, possibly in light of reports of the anticipated closure order by The Daily Sentinel and KUSA-TV in Denver.
But Rhinehart said he was part of a conference call Friday in which a regional forestry official said a blanket cave-closure order was highly likely in the next week or so.
The action is being considered to prevent the spread of white nose syndrome to caves in Colorado. It’s caused by a fungus that has spread from the East to as far west as Oklahoma. It has a high fatality rate for bats, killing them by disturbing and rousing them during hibernation and leaving them in a weakened state.
Forest Service Region 2 comprises Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, Kansas and Nebraska. Most of Colorado’s caves are in the White River National Forest.
Janelle Smith, a regional Forest Service spokeswoman, said the agency “definitely” still is considering a closure.
“We just paused to coordinate more closely with some of our sister agencies and we have been talking with the folks in the caving community,” she said.
She said the Bureau of Land Management and the Fish and Wildlife Service are among agencies being consulted.
The closure would affect only caves on national forests. The owner of Glenwood Caverns and Historic Fairy Caves, a commercial site near Glenwood Springs, has said the site would not be included in the closure order but is working with the Forest Service on the issue. The caves have little or no bat population.
Cave of the Winds, a commercial cave near Manitou Springs, also said it wouldn’t be affected. However, operations manager Jeremy Stiles worries that the closure might be premature and overly broad. He questions closing caves without bats, and whether cavers help spread the fungus. Nevertheless, he said responsible cavers are decontaminating cave clothing and taking other preventive steps to protect bats.
Rhinehart fears that a blanket rather than more targeted closure would alienate cavers who otherwise could help the Forest Service by educating the public about closures, reporting bat and fungus sightings and sharing information with authorities about little-known cave locations.
Smith said the Forest Service feels an urgency to act because the fungus has spread so close to Colorado. She said the agency is considering issues raised by the caving community and recognizes that it plays an important role in addressing the issue.
“Anything that we do, the caving community, recreational caves and folks like Richard Rhinehart are really key to the success in helping us get the word out and prevent the spread as much as we can,” she said.
Rhinehart said the Forest Service also is considering a closure order for Region 3, Arizona and New Mexico. He said the BLM has made no decisions on closures. He said it may roll out a closure plan — possibly a targeted one — later this year, perhaps first in New Mexico.
The BLM manages numerous caves in the Grand Junction, De Beque and Montrose region and the Glenwood Springs and Cañon City areas, Rhinehart said.
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Fungus decimates local bat population
Lewisboro, NY Ledger, written by Matt Dalen
Thursday, 8 July 2010It has become obvious to any observer of the night sky: There are fewer bats in the area than there have been in the past, and bat boxes are going unused. And while many factors are likely affecting bat populations, one major cause is obvious: white-nose syndrome, a fungus that has wiped out close to 90% of the little brown bats — up to now, the most common species in the area — in New York.
“We used to sit out [in the evening] and see a show of bats over the paddocks,” said Katonah resident Janet Harckham. “We would see dozens of bats swooping and eating insects. We have yet to see one bat this season.”
According to wildlife biologist Carl Herzog of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), white-nose syndrome has decimated bat populations by taking root in their wintering caves.
“In the summertime, they’re spread out all across the landscape, but in the wintertime, they congregate in a relatively few underground locations. That’s where the effects of the white-nose problem are apparent, and that’s where they die during the wintertime.”
While Mr. Herzog said that all six bat species that spend their winters in New York have been found with the syndrome, they have reacted differently. Some populations, such as the big brown bat, appear nearly unaffected, and the big brown bat is likely the most common bat in the state now. Others, like the previously common little brown bat, have been decimated.
While no cases of white-nose syndrome have been reported in Westchester, Mr. Herzog said that was not surprising, as the fungus primarily hits the bats’ wintering grounds. He said that bats in northern Westchester, including Lewisboro, are likely to winter in New York caves, the nearest of which is an old mine complex in Kingston. Bat populations in that mine have declined by about 90% from several years ago.
Declining bat populations are likely to have effects across the ecosystem. Although they are largely credited with eating mosquitos, Mr. Herzog said that a larger issue may be an increase in moths, beetles, and other agricultural pests, which are larger and more likely to be eaten.
“Although bats do eat a lot of insects, we don’t really know for sure that there would be necessarily a change in insect abundance because they’re missing; we don’t have any baseline information of insect abundance from the pre-white-nose years,” Mr. Herzog said. “We just know so little about the bat issue from a quantitative perspective.”
He said that he was managing a project to track bat populations, by having volunteers drive around the state with detection equipment. That project is intended to track where different bat populations spend their summers, a question that has been largely unstudied.
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Bad for bats: Bracing for white nose syndrome in the West
By Madeline Bodin
High Country News
July 3, 2010When the members of Boy Scout Troop 958 emerged from Fort Stanton Cave near Ruidoso, N.M., into the bright August day, they headed immediately to a nearby restroom. There they shed their muddy clothes, kneepads and gloves, stuffing them into plastic Walmart bags. They took the bags to the cave bunkhouse, some distance from the restroom, and tossed everything into washing machines. Then they plopped their helmets into a barrel of disinfectant and swabbed their headlamps with disinfecting wipes.
The sanitation efforts were meant to help protect bats from a disease called white nose syndrome. It's killed over a million bats in the Eastern United States since 2006, but it hasn't hit the West — yet. The disease is likely caused by a cold-loving fungus that strikes bats during winter hibernation, when their lower body temperature allows it to take hold. It's called white nose syndrome because it smudges the bats' faces and wings with white.
Similar fungi (think athlete's foot), annoy, but don't kill. Scientists suspect this particular fungus annoys the bats so much that it disrupts their hibernation: They wake up to scratch and groom it away, using up their fat reserves and starving to death before food becomes available in spring. The syndrome has wiped out nearly all of the bats in the caves it hits.
In the East, wildlife managers have been powerless to stop the fungus, which is thought to spread when bats rub against each other during hibernation, in maternity colonies and while mating. But humans may play a role in moving it from region to region and even from continent to continent. White nose syndrome was unknown in the U.S. before 2006, but bats with a similar white fuzz on their faces and wings had been seen for decades in Europe, where the syndrome does not appear to be lethal.
Land managers and wildlife biologists are divided on whether white nose syndrome will come to the West. Some believe it is inevitable, and that the threat to Western bats has grown since mid-April, when white nose syndrome was confirmed for the first time west of the Mississippi River, in a cave in eastern Missouri. “I think you would have to be terribly naïve to think that the sites in the West haven't been at risk,” says Pat Ormsbee, a bat biologist for the U.S. Forest Service who serves as white nose syndrome committee chair for the Western Bat Working Group.
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White-nose Syndrome still a threat to Great Lakes Bats
Alice Rossignol, Great Lakes Echo
Jul 2, 2010White-nose Syndrome — a disease that’s killed more than a million bats across the U.S. and Canada since 2006 — still threatens Great Lakes states.
Bats with the disease sport a white fungus on their faces, which can spread to other parts of the body, causing a myriad of problems that lead to death.
Over the last winter, researchers found the syndrome or the fungus thought to be responsible for it in five more states and Canadian provinces, including Ontario. That brings the total to 16, which includes New York, Pennsylvania and Quebec.
Six Great Lakes states have been spared. But its arrival is still possible.
“I’m glad that you don’t have White-nose yet, but I would be concerned,” said Mylea Bayless, a conservation biologist of Bat Conservation International, based in Texas.
Scientists believe that a fungus, conducive to cold-temperature environments, just like the caves and mines bats hibernate in, causes the disease.
“All the available evidence says that the fungus is responsible for the disease. However we haven’t been able to replicate the full disease in the lab,” Bayless said.
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Illinois so far safe from destructive white nose syndrome
By Brian DeNeal
Daily Register, posted July 1, 2010 @ 02:25 PMSHAWNEE NATIONAL FOREST — The white nose syndrome fungus has decimated bat populations in the northeast and has been found in two sites in Missouri, one site in western Oklahoma and several sites in Tennessee.
However, there have been no findings of the syndrome in bat populations in Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana or Ohio. The sporadic pattern further convinces biologists the fungus is being spread by humans traveling from cave to cave rather than migrating bats.
"It could be we have done a good job in keeping caves closed to people who could have brought it in on their gear or clothing. It could mean we are doing a real good job at keeping people out," Rod McLanahan, wildlife biologist for the Shawnee National Forest Hidden Springs Ranger District said.
All federally and state owned caves in the state are closed to visitors. Some more popular caves are being gated.
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Many caves remain closed as bat-killing fungus spreads
By Ben Phelps • bphelps@courier-journal.com •
June 27, 2010For the second straight summer, most area caves are closed to the public in an attempt to keep a fungus that has killed nearly a million East Coast bats from making its way to the Midwest.
White Nose Syndrome has been confirmed in 14 states -- although not in Kentucky or Indiana -- decimating some bat populations by 95 percent.
The fungus forms a white covering that irritates the bats' faces and wings, burns up their fat reserves and awakes them early from hibernation, leaving them struggling to find food and water in the harsh winter conditions. They exhibit atypical behavior, such as flying during the day, and eventually starve or freeze.
The cause of the fungus and exactly how it spreads aren't known, although there's some concern -- yet no proof -- that its spores could be carried on the clothing and shoes of cave visitors.
Local cave owners and enthusiasts fear that the fungus could infect area caves by year's end and potentially lead to the extinction of some bat species.
Almost all state-owned caves in Indiana and Kentucky are closed, including caves at O'Bannon Woods State Park in Indiana and the Daniel Boone National Forest in Kentucky. Because the fungus is still spreading, officials aren't sure when the closed caves can reopen.
"It's definitely near the realm of an ecological disaster," said Brooke Slack, a bat biologist at the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources.
Slack said that within five years, two or three of Kentucky's endangered bat species could be extinct.
Some cave systems -- such as Mammoth Cave in Kentucky -- have stayed open but are using contamination procedures to kill spores that may be carried unknowingly by visitors who have been in other caves.
Some commercial caves also remain open, their owners saying there's no proof that people spread the fungus.
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Bats serve humanity, (winged) hand and foot
By Joel Banner Baird
Free Press Staff Writer
Sunday, June 27, 2010SHELBURNE — Vermont’s unsung summer-night heroes deserve more help from humans, says South Burlington bat advocate Barry Genzlinger.
Why? Because hungry bats are the front line against night-flying insects, including mosquitoes and countless agricultural pests.
Adding urgency to Genzlinger’s mission: In just four years, white- nose syndrome has killed more than 90 percent of the state’s bat population, and the fungal infection appears to be unstoppable.
The unrelenting toll of white-nose syndrome on bats in the Northeast — and the spread of the fungus to Southern and Midwestern states — puzzles the nation’s foremost experts. Alan Hicks, a mammal specialist with the Endangered Species Unit at New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation, is among them.
“The little brown bat has been pounded by it,” he said last week. “It’s pretty much gone now.”
Hicks and other scientists continue to study winter data from New York and Vermont caves. They’re also bracing for white-nose syndrome’s aftershocks among surviving bats.
Hicks said these could include lower-than-usual fertility rates among surviving bats (although bats live upward of 20 years, they typically give birth to only one pup per season); and a gruesome and sometimes fatal thinning of wing tissue when bats’ immune systems surround and successfully slough off fungus-infected skin.
Coast-to-coast? A map created by several wildlife agencies and Bat Conservation International resembles a battle plan, with broad arrows of infection arching north into Quebec and Ontario and as far southwest as the Oklahoma panhandle.
Other arrows trace anticipated paths of destruction into Ohio, Indiana and Illinois.
Infection among the cave myotis bats in Oklahoma, Genzlinger pointed out, poses a risk to other migratory bats capable of spreading the death toll coast-to-coast.
A sharp decline in bats would rob the greater North American food system of its cheapest, cleanest insecticide, he said.
“The scary thing is, there’s no hint over how to slow this thing down,” he added.
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Courtesy of Joe ZokaitesCrisis threatens bats in NRV, U.S
Wildlife officials are considering allowing visits to caves in Virginia for the first time since May 2009
By Jane W. Graham
Special to The Roanoke Times, June 1, 2010New River Valley residents who live close to nature knew something was wrong this winter. The shadow of a flying bat in a snow-covered yard just has to mean something bad.
On cold snowy winter days, bats should be hibernating deep in caves away from the rigors of winter.
Some probably knew something was wrong but didn't realize they were seeing part of a major wildlife crisis that has the potential for devastating results in the years to come.
No solution has been found to what wildlife specialists are calling white-nose syndrome, also known as Geomyces destructans.
Scientists have found this to be a fungal attack on bats that started in the Northeast and spread south into Virginia with the speed at which disaster often travels.
The National Speleological Society goes as far as to quote scientists who see it as "the most serious known decline in North American wildlife."
The latest findings in Southwest Virginia paint a grim picture.
Will Orndorff, Karst Protection Coordinator with the Department of Recreation and Conservation in Christiansburg, reported researchers are finding 90 percent mortality rates in some local caves.
In one Bland County cave, where they expected to find 3,000 bats in April, they found fewer than 50, he said.
No signs have been found that white-nose syndrome is a threat to human health but anyone going into caves or coming into contact with bats is urged to decontaminate themselves, their clothes and gear to keep from spreading it from one hibernacula to another.
Professionals and cavers studying the disease in caves wear protective clothing and disposable gloves as a precaution. People who work with bats also have pre-rabies vaccinations like veterinarians as a precaution, Zokaites said.
The Zokaiteses first attended a conference in Blacksburg about the threat of white-nose syndrome in Blacksburg in 2008.
After this conference, the couple started looking for the syndrome. She said her husband checked the entrances to caves they visited in 2008 and did not find any sign of the disease.
Joe Zokaites did not want to go into the caves and disturb the sleeping bats, and he knew one of the signs of the syndrome is bats coming from deep within the caves to their entrances.
The first sighting of the disease in Virginia, which has approximately 4,500 known caves, was in Bath County on Feb. 25, 2009, she said.
Visits may soon resume after a year hiatus
Carol Zokaites reports that cavers have played an important part in this search.
"Cavers are citizen scientists," she said. "They've mapped the caves."
Zokaites said that after she and her husband reported his finding the disease in the New River Valley, her phone started ringing.
"It was hard to tell them not to go caving," she said. "Never in my life did I think I'd have to tell people not to go into caves."
The caves have been closed for the past year to help discourage the spread of the disease, but the policy is being updated to possibly allow more cave visitation, caving enthusiasts learned recently.
The current policy on caving activities in Virginia can be found on the DCR Karst Program Web page www.dcr.virginia.gov/natural_heritage/ karsthome.shtml.
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Illinois shutting caves in attempt to halt spread of fungus causing fatal bat disease
By WILLIAM MULLEN - Chicago Tribune
Sunday, May. 02, 2010CHICAGO -- After a lone bat was found in Missouri last week with a mysterious fungus, Illinois authorities took quick action. They closed all six state-owned caves enjoyed by the public and asked that the owners of scores of private caves throughout the state stop all public access.
The measure is an attempt to halt white nose syndrome, a lethal disease for bats that has been spreading west across the United States since it was discovered in upstate New York in 2006. With a mortality rate of up to 100 percent, it has since killed more than a million bats from Canada to Tennessee.
The detection of the fungus in the Midwest raises the likelihood that the bat disease has reached Illinois, or could soon. And with it comes concerns about the larger ecosystem, especially in the Midwest, where ravenous, bug-eating bats serve as a major source of crop protection.
A single bat eats nearly its own weight of insects every night, a colony of 150 bats can eat more than a million insects a season.
The state caves are common destinations for recreational cavers and Boy Scout troops from across the state, especially the popular Illinois Caverns south of St. Louis. News of the closings was met with understanding by experienced cavers who know the seriousness of the bat illness and the nocturnal animals' important ecological role.
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Lights Out For Bats?
Questions fly as mysterious White Nose Syndrome kills untold numbers of West Virginia Bats.
Story by Christine Miller Ford
Posted Thursday, April 29, 2010
More than three years ago, when Craig Stihler heard that a mysterious fungus was killing bats as they hibernated in upstate New York, he didn't immediately worry.
"At the time, it was more of a curiosity," said the state Division of Natural Resources' wildlife biologist.
But the puzzling malady known as White Nose Syndrome migrated from New York to neighboring states in the northeast, and then it arrived in West Virginia in 2009.
Now the disease is taking a toll on bat populations across the state and turning up in caves as far south as Tennessee and as far west as Missouri.
Stihler admitted that seeing the creatures' numbers decimated leaves him feeling despondent many mornings as he heads off to the job he loves.
"You know you're probably not going to hear any good news, only that more bats are dying," he said.
After working to protect bats and their habitats for a quarter-century -- and finding success as yearly surveys showed bat populations on the upswing -- Stihler's outlook these days is far more subdued.
"Never in my wildest dreams did I expect to see a fungus show up and start killing bats by the thousands," he said. "Once White Nose is documented in a cave, what typically happens is within a year, 90 percent of the bats living there die. It's absolutely devastating."
And the implications go beyond just an emotional loss for nature lovers.
With fewer bats out on summer nights feeding on mosquitoes, moths, beetles and other pests, it appears likely farmers and foresters will have to find a replacement for this powerful natural insecticide.
Because many recreational cavers feel reluctant to risk helping to spread White Nose, Pendleton County and other cave-rich areas of West Virginia are likely to see a decline in tourism dollars this spring and summer.
"Right now, we don't have any idea how to stop this," Stihler said. "Scientists are testing all kinds of possibilities to try and find a way to protect at least some of the bats. Then we could look to the survivors to repopulate, but the truth is there may be nothing we can do.
"It's an extremely frustrating time."
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Mark Twain National Forest caves close due to bat fungus
By Donna Farley ~ Daily American Republic POPLAR BLUFF, Mo.
Friday, April 30, 2010Caves on Missouri Department of Conservation and Mark Twain National Forest land will be closed for one year following the discovery last week of white nose syndrome in Missouri. The fungus is blamed for the deaths of at least 1 million bats in the United States over the past four years.
This is the first time the department has closed bat caves for the fungus, according to Derek Shiels, cave biologist technician. The closure affects 80 of the department's 290 caves and all of its bat caves.
It includes Johnny Holt Cave and Mitchell Hollow Cave, both at Peck Ranch Conservation Area in Carter County, as well as Whisper Cave at Little Black Conservation Area in Ripley County.
The announcement represents a one-year renewal of closures issued last April for all of Mark Twain's approximately 600 caves and mines.
"We want to minimize the spread of this as much as we can," said Megan Harris, wildlife biologist with Mark Twain National Forest. "We're trying to be proactive."
Geomyces destructans is a cold-loving fungus that causes bats to emerge from hibernation early, Harris said. Depleting the bats' body fat puts them at risk of freezing or starving to death.
Little is known about white nose syndrome, and researchers have been unable to determine if the fungus is the sole cause of this change in behavior or part of a larger problem, Harris said.
The fungus is primarily spread bat to bat, Shiels said. For the Department of Conservation, the closures are more of an effort to minimize stress of already weakened bats.
"We want to reduce disturbance so we can give them the best chance of survival," Shiels said.
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DNR Closes Caves Due to Threat of Fungus Affecting Bats
Release from Iowa DNRRAPID SPREADING DISEASE PROMPTS CLOSURE OF CAVES WHERE BATS HIBERNATE
DES MOINES – State natural resources officials are closing state-owned caves that bats use for hibernation to help slow a disease known as white-nose syndrome that is killing bats across the eastern half of the United States and now has surfaced in Missouri. In Iowa, those caves are primarily found in the northeast and far southeast counties.
Daryl Howell, an environmental specialist with the DNR’s land and waters bureau, said the DNR will be closing caves that could likely serve as a bat roost for hibernation, like those found at Maquoketa Caves State Park, Starr’s Cave, near Burlington, and Searryl’s Cave in Jones County starting Monday, May 3rd. Caves closed to the public will be posted with a sign
The closure of caves follows recommendations by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service due to the rapid spread of white-nose syndrome into the Midwest. State-owned caves have already been closed in Indiana and Illinois.
“We are reluctant to do this because one of our primary goals is to encourage Iowa citizens to explore the outdoors, but we also recognize that we have a responsibility to protect natural resources,” said DNR Director Richard Leopold.
For privately-owned caves known to have hibernating bat populations, Howell said the DNR is recommending that cave owners close their caves as well.
“We don’t know a lot about this disease or how it is transported, but are taking precautions to help slow the spread,” said Daryl Howell. “The disease is transmitted bat to bat, but it is also likely transported to sites inadvertently by people carrying it in on their clothing or in the mud on their shoes.”
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Waterloo cave closes to halt fungus from killing bats
News-Democrat, Tuesday, Apr. 27, 2010The metro-east's only underground state park just closed to stop a disease that is killing bats.
A group of school students pass by the Capitol Dome formation in Illinois Caverns during a field trip in the fall. Illinois Caverns is one of six state-owned and managed caves closed to protect bat populations from the white-nose syndrome that has destroyed Illinois Caverns and five other state-owned caves are now closed, Illinois Department of Natural Resources Director Marc Miller announced Monday. The move is intended to stop the spread of white-nose syndrome, a fungus that attacks hibernating bats and is responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of bats in the Northeast.
The fungus is suspected by government biologists to be spread by cave visitors who do not thoroughly clean their boots and gear before moving from one cave to another.
But that assumption is questioned by a leader in a state caving group. Ken Redeker, vice chairperson of the Windy City Grotto of the National Speleological Society, said the transmission mechanism is still unknown and may have nothing to do with cavers.
"Bats do a lot of migrating and that may be one reason white nose syndrome is spreading," Redeker said. "It's a good thing to take safety precautions but Illinois and Indiana are closing lots of caves with no bat population at all."
His group has worked to study, preserve and protect Illinois Caverns, including long before the state bought it in 1985. He said it has a small bat population that he did not think warranted closing the cave.
Illinois Caverns has drawn visitors since 1904, when visitors to the St. Louis World's Fair ventured out to see its formations by kerosene lamp. It was a commercial cave briefly starting in 1947 but the venture failed and it became well known to cavers, outdoor recreation instructors and biology teachers because of its accessibility and variety of formations, miles of passageways and fauna.
Redeker said while he questions the move he supports precautions to stop the devastation to the bat populations. He said bats are a vital link in the ecosystem because of the large volume of insects they consume.
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Bat disease spreading much faster than expected
knoxnews.com, by Morgan Simmons, posted April 23, 2010
Photo by Sterling Daniels
A tri-colored bat infected with white-nose syndrome hibernates in Sullivan County.A mysterious fungus that has wiped out millions of bats in the northeastern United States is spreading across Tennessee faster than expected, biologists say.
The state's first case of white-nose syndrome was reported last February in a cave in Sullivan County, in upper East Tennessee. Since then, infected bats have been found in four more caves on the Cumberland Plateau.
Cory Holliday, cave specialist for The Nature Conservancy, said biologists found bats infected with early stages of the fungus as recently as a few weeks ago.
"We expected to see it in eastern Tennessee this winter, but we didn't know how far west it would spread," Holliday said. "We had hoped we wouldn't see it on the Cumberland Plateau this soon."
White-nose syndrome is caused by an exotic fungus that thrives in the cool, damp environment of caves and mines. Bats infected with the fungus awaken during hibernation and burn off precious fat reserves, leading to starvation and death.
The fungus has killed more than 90 percent of the bats in caves and mines throughout the northeast, and is just now showing up in the Southeast.
The Great Smoky Mountains National Park recently confirmed its first case of white-nose syndrome on a little brown bat collected while hibernating in the park's White Oak Blowhole cave, the largest known Indiana bat hibernacula in Tennessee.
Tennessee has more than 9,000 caves - more caves than any other state. There are 15 bat species in Tennessee, but not all are cave hibernators and subject to white-nose syndrome.
The state's two federally endangered bat species, gray and Indiana bats, so far have not been found with the fungus.
Last year, the closest white-nose syndrome came to Tennessee was a cave in southwestern Virginia. In February of this year, the fungus made its first Tennessee appearance in a cave in Sullivan County, and then in a cave in nearby Carter County.
After that, the disease was confirmed on the Cumberland Plateau, first in Dunbar Cave, part of a state natural area in Montgomery County, and then in a cave in Fentress County. As recently as last week, white-nose syndrome was diagnosed in bats collected from a cave in Van Buren County.
In Tennessee, the fungus so far has been found only on tri-colored bats (formerly known as the eastern pipistrelle), and northern long-eared bats.
Researchers are scrambling to develop an effective treatment that controls the fungus without harming the caves' delicate ecosystems.
This winter, scientists inspected a number of Tennessee's best-known bat caves in a stepped up effort to track the disease.
Meanwhile, white-nose syndrome was confirmed this week for the first time in a Missouri cave about 300 miles from the next closest known site of infestation in Tennessee.
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DEP Affirms Possibility Of 'Local Extinction' Of Some Bat Species
By RINKER BUCK
The Hartford Courant
12:35 p.m. EDT, April 20, 2010The die-off from white-nose syndrome is now so severe that many species of Connecticut's bats may be "locally extinct within the decade," Connecticut's supervising wildlife biologist said at a news conference today.
Jenny Dickson of Connecticut's Department of Environmental Protection said that the magnitude of the crisis facing the state's bat population is beyond anything most wildlife biologists have seen in their careers, and the speed with which white-nose is spreading across the continent will prevent local populations from quickly recovering by being supplemented with bats from nearby state.
DEP scheduled the press conference to share the results of its winter count of bats before they left their hibernation caves at the end of the winter. More than 1 million bats in the Northeast have died so far by a condition that coats them with a chalky fungus, interrupting their hibernation and causing the bats to wake up and burn off critical fat reserves they usually retain until the insects they feed on are plentiful in the spring.
At one Litchfield County cave that was believed to be Connecticut's largest hibernation location, the 2007 winter count revealed 3,300 wintering bats. This year, DEP said, fewer than a dozen bats remain, and all but one of those bats showed signs of white-nose damage.
Another large hibernation site for Connecticut bats had between 1,600 and 1,800 bats three years ago, Dickson said. The bat count at that cave is now down to just 69 animals.
Bats are considered vital to the balance of nature because they consume large amounts of insects as they feed every night, curbing the population of mosquitoes that attack humans and frequently removing the larger moths and insects that attack farm crops and forests. Scientists are worried that the rapid decline in bat populations will allow insects to flourish, possibly affecting the health of crops.
Dickson said that the rapid spread of the disease across the country worries scientists because many species of bats are already considered threatened.
"We have just learned that white-nose was found a cave in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park," Dickson said. "That cave contains one of the largest habitats for the endangered Indiana bat. So the possibility of this spreading and taking out a whole species is very real."
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White Nose Syndrome Found in Missouri
Written by Michele Skalicky
Bat infected with white nose syndrome.
(Photo provided by Missouri Department of Conservation)Biologists in Missouri thought they had at least another year before white nose syndrome was found on a bat in the state. But laboratory tests confirmed the presence of the fungus on a bat in a privately-owned cave in Pike County in northeast Missouri. According to Bill Elliott, cave biologist for the Missouri Department of Conservation, the fungal infection gets on a bat’s face, ears and wings and deeply invades the skin tissues. Infected bats awaken more often during their winter hibernation and use up stored fat reserves. They either starve to death or freeze…
"Sometimes the bats are found kind of pathetically flying around at the entrance to the cave or even going outside in midwinter with snow on the ground trying to find bugs to eat, and it's pretty sad, you know."
Biologists aren’t completely sure how it spreads, but it appears to spread mainly thru bat-to-bat contact and has not been found to infect humans or other animals. So far white nose syndrome has infected six bat species in the U.S. that hibernate in caves and mines, including the endangered Indiana Bat. All are found in Missouri. Elliott says the finding of one infected bat in the state is a very early warning for biologists working to protect Missouri’s bats against the disease. No treatment has been found. Elliott says caves can be closed so bats have quiet time to recover from the infection since some DO survive. And disinfecting caving gear so WNS spores aren’t carried into caves can also help…
Fungus kills off 90% of N.J. bats
Friday, April 2, 2010
BY James M. O'Neill, Staff Writer
The Record
The devastation was shocking in the largest hibernation spot for bats in New Jersey - Morris County's Hibernia Mine. As many as 30,000 bats normally spend the winter, but a recent count found only about 1,700 alive - and many of those showed signs of infection, said Mick Valent, principal zoologist with the state's Endangered and Non-game Species Program.
“The results we had from Hibernia Mine were certainly not good news,” Valent said.
The fungus, called white-nose syndrome for the whitish powder that appears on the nose, ears and wing membrane of infected bats, was first discovered on bats in New York in 2006. It has since been linked to the deaths of more than a million bats in 11 states, from New Hampshire to Virginia, and has also spread to Ontario, Canada. The virus appears to be following the path of the Appalachian Mountains.
“This is unprecedented and scary,” said Lance Risley, a bat researcher and chairman of the biology department at William Paterson University. “This wave has killed more mammals in the United States than anything in recent memory. It is entirely possible it could sweep all the way across the country to California, killing millions more bats.”
Experts warn that the widespread loss of bats has potential ramifications for humans, since bats consume huge quantities of bugs, including insects that damage crops or carry West Nile and other potentially fatal diseases.
The bat deaths come at a particularly bad time in New Jersey, where mosquito control experts worry that the recent rains and floods have created ample breeding grounds for mosquitoes that could result in an unusually large mosquito population. A single bat can consume more than 3,000 mosquitoes on a single summer night.
Last November, Congress approved $1.9 million for research to identify the cause and seek solutions for white-nose syndrome.
Biologists in affected states are discussing ways to help the decimated bat population recover. They are testing various fungicides, hoping to find one that might help bats recover without harming them.New Jersey scientists, meanwhile, are considering capturing several dozen infected bats, nursing them back to health, then reintroducing them to a contaminated hibernation spot to see if they have developed immunity to the mysterious disease.
Valent first saw signs of white-nose syndrome among bats in New Jersey in the winter of of 2008-09.The recent count confirmed his fears that it would decimate the population.
Officials say all six species of bats that hibernate in New Jersey - big brown, little brown, Indiana, northern long-eared, small-footed and tri-colored or eastern pip¬istrelle - have been affected by the fungus.
“If this keeps going, our bat populations will disappear,” Valent said.
“Once the population drops so dramatically, the genetic variability of the species goes down, and they are more susceptible to a variety of illnesses.”Also see: Fungus blamed for reducing bats in Rockaway Twp. cave from 27,000 to 1,700
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Clarksville attraction closed indefinitely
Posted: Apr 01, 2010 5:31 PM
Dunbar Cave closes due to white noise syndrome
CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. – A popular Clarksville tourist attraction will be closed to the public indefinitely.
The Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency has suspended cave tours at Dunbar Cave State natural area after a bat there tested positive for white nose syndrome.
White nose syndrome is a fungus that is easily spread from bat to bat and "once a cave has it, it has it and we can't risk it spreading to other caves in this area," according to Andrea English, wildlife officer with the TWRA.
Megan Knight has been to Dunbar Cave at least four times and was disappointed to hear the cave is closed.
"I think about future generations not being able to come out here," she said. "It's a big part of Clarksville."
White nose syndrome has been around since 2006, but the first case in the area was only discovered in February, in east Tennessee.
"Until we know people cannot contaminate caves with boots or gear, we're going to be very conservative about keeping the caves closed," English said.
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A fungus has killed off about 90 percent of the state's bat population, according to scientists who recently conducted a count of hibernating bats.
State to close three more caves to avert bat fungus
Posted on 01 April 2010Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — Three more caves at Arkansas state parks will be closed to the public this month as state and federal agencies work to slow the spread of White-nose Syndrome in bats.
State Parks Director Greg Butts announced today the closing of Devil’s Den Cave and Ice Box Cave at Devil’s Den State Park, and War Eagle Cave at Withrow Springs State Park on April 16.
Farmer’s Cave and Big Ear Cave at Devil’s Den closed in May 2009.
“These emergency closures are necessary as we work to protect these caves from the possibility of contamination,” Butts said in a news release.
White-nose Syndrome, a fungus killing bats in the eastern United States, was discovered in the Northeast in three years ago and has spread as far west as central Tennessee, Butts said.
The fungus has killed as many as 1 million bats in the New England and Mid-Atlantic states.
State cave experts say the white-nose fungus could be in Arkansas within a year.
“Safeguarding natural, historical and cultural resources is an integral part of Arkansas State Parks’ mission,” Butts said. “We know the public will understand why we are joining other state and federal agencies in doing all we can to protect Arkansas’s caves and the bat species that inhabit them.”
Sixteen species of bats are found in the state.
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A killer in the bat cave
24 March 2010 by Shaoni BhattacharyaVideo: Bat murder mystery Credit: http://batmanagement.com/
Editorial: Help save the bats of America
CORPSE upon corpse they lie, a carpet of emaciated, fungus-ridden carcasses. Where once healthy animals hung in slumber from the cave roof, now there is a mass grave on the floor. It is a scene that is repeated throughout the eastern US, from Vermont to West Virginia. America's bats are in crisis, under threat from a mysterious killer.
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Athlete’s foot therapy tapped to treat bat-killing fungus
Hibernating bats treated in several New York mines.
By Janet Raloff
Web edition : Monday, March 22nd, 2010
SAN FRANCISCO — Over the past four years, a mysterious white-nose fungus has struck hibernating North American bats. Populations in affected caves and mines can experience death rates of more than 80 percent over a winter. In desperation, an informal interagency task force of scientists from state and federal agencies has just launched an experimental program to fight the plague. Their weapon: a drug ordinarily used to treat athlete’s foot.
John Eisemann of the Agriculture Department’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, better known as APHIS, in Fort Collins, Colo., mentioned the new program during his talk, here, at the American Chemical Society’s spring national meeting. He was describing legal tactics by which wildlife officials can thwart invasive vertebrate species with off-the-shelf chemicals.
He noted, for instance, how scientists have used a contraceptive vaccine — one designed to control white-tail deer populations — on rodents. It offered a nonlethal approach to reining in the population explosion of non-native fox squirrels on a University of California campus. In another instance, wildlife managers employed a cholesterol inhibiting drug to reduce sex hormone levels — and the urge to reproduce — among invasive monk parakeets. And on Guam, Eisemann’s team designed special traps baited with neonatal mouse carcasses. Each bait had been implanted with a child’s dose of acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol. It proved amazingly effective in strategically poisoning a major scourge, invasive brown treesnakes — and only that species.
The bat task force enlisted Eisemann’s help to make sure that whatever they tried would be legal. He’s the go-to guy for identifying what permissions, waivers or requests are required before wildlife managers can apply poisons or anti-fertility drugs. The Food and Drug Administration allows for some off-label use of an existing drug as a veterinary prescription. And that's the tactic he arranged for the task force to use with the athlete’s foot drug .
Theoretically, Eisemann says, it should have been possible for scientists to apply to get the chemical officially registered — as in approved — for use on bats. But with the disease spreading like wildfire and the potential market for a white-nose therapeutic tiny, the time and expense didn’t seem feasible.
Afraid of upsetting the ecological balance of endemic fungi in caves, the scientists decided to pilot test the program in already perturbed and disturbed environments -- two mines in upstate New York. In February, the researchers applied the antifungal medicine onto the noses of several hundred bats. It killed the fungus, Eisemann says. At least in test-tube studies with the fungus. Now the goal is to see if and how it might have affected the treated colonies’ die-off rate, since only a small share of any population had their noses rubbed with the antifungal drug.
Indeed, the scientists are hoping they might not need to treat the entire colony. “If there’s enough communal grooming,” Eisemann said, “they may only need to treat a certain percentage of the bats.”
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Bat in Clarksville's Dunbar Cave with deadly fungus may be migrant
Cave tours suspendedBy CHRIS SMITH • The Leaf-Chronicle • March 24, 2010
A mysterious fungus that has killed more than a million bats in the Northeast United States has been found in Dunbar Cave, but a researcher believes the infected bat may not be part of the long-term colony.
The bat was discovered there recently with the tell-tale white fungus on its wings.
In response, Tennessee State Parks has suspended all public cave tours at Dunbar until further notice, said Mike Carlton, assistant commissioner.
“It’s not a decision we took lightly,” Carlton said. “If we get a glimmer of hope and feel like we can operate (the tours) without causing bat problems,” the tours may begin again.
But Carlton didn’t seem hopeful that would happen soon.
While park officials and researchers are concerned about bats in the cave, the real danger is that “white nose syndrome” could continue to spread, and that could risk wiping out entire populations of bats in Tennessee.
White nose syndrome killed at least 95 percent of the bats in one New York hibernation colony in only two years, according to a Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency news release.
The disease causes bats to use up their fat reserves rapidly during hibernation, according to a news release. This causes affected bats to fly out of caves during winter in an attempt to find food. Since the insects bats eat are seasonally dormant, the bats die of starvation.
Researchers have been unable to identify a cause or treatment.
While the syndrome is not known to present any danger to humans, bats play a key role in keeping insects — including agricultural pests, mosquitoes and forest pests — under control, according to the Tennessee Deptartment of Environment and Conservation.
Dunbar Cave does not have a large bat population, partly because of a fire set by vandals in 1970 that wiped out the entire population, now in recovery.
That’s part of the reason the cave wasn’t closed in July last year when the state closed all the other state-owned caves as a precaution against the syndrome.
The discoveryThe infected bat was found about three weeks ago by Seth McCormick, an Austin Peay State University undergraduate researcher with the Center of Excellence for Field Biology.
First case of white-nose fungus found in Ontario bat colony
Disease threatens survival of species
By Patrick Kahtouni, The Ottawa CitizenMarch 21, 2010 3:03 AM
Canada's first reported case of a disease that kills bats by the thousands has been discovered at a hibernation site in the Bancroft-Minden area.
White-nose syndrome, a lethal fungus that has decimated populations of bats in the northeast region of the United States, could pose a threat to the survival of several species of bats in Canada.
The name of the disease refers to a ring of white fungus around the muzzles and bodies of bats. The disease isn't fully understood yet, but researchers know that it affects the bats during hibernation.
"It's a very significant threat," said John Dungavell, a wildlife health policy advisor with Ontario's Ministry of Natural Resources.
Dungavell said the disease could be transferred by physical contact among the bats, as well as carried by humans to various hibernation sites.
However, there are no known human health risks associated with the syndrome.
The disease, which was first discovered four years ago in a cave near Albany, New York, has been associated with the death of more than one million bats in the eastern U.S.
Dungavell said the number of bats found in Ontario with white- nose syndrome is still very small. Bancroft is about 200 kilometres west of Ottawa.
However, the impact of the disease and how quickly it spreads can't be underestimated. Within two years, a site in New York with the largest colony of little brown bats in the world dwindled from 200,000 to 3,000 bats.
"In terms of assessing the impact here in Canada, we have to look to the U.S.," said Dungavell, adding the mortality rate in the U.S. has been 80 to 99 per cent amongst infected bats.
Dungavell stressed the importance of bats to wildlife diversity as they contribute to insect population management.
The Canadian Cooperative Wildlife Health Centre and the ministry are encouraging the public to stay away from caves and to report any unusual bat mortality by calling 1-866-673-4781.
The ministry is also advising the public not to touch any bats, as a small percentage carry rabies.
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Desperate Efforts to Save Endangered Bats May Fail
Wired Science
By Brandon Keim
March 12, 2010
A fierce attempt to keep endangered Virginia big-eared bats alive in captivity has shown just how difficult that noble task may be.
The effort was prompted by the discovery of white nose syndrome, an extremely virulent disease that has killed more than a million bats since 2007, in one of the handful of caves where Virginia big-eared bats live. Of 40 bats moved to the Smithsonian National Zoo last November, only 11 have survived.
“We were not under the illusion that it was going to be easy. It’s certainly not a surprise to us that the bats died. But the number of bats that died is greater than we had hoped,” said Jeremy Coleman, white nose syndrome coordinator at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The captive colony project was controversial from the start. With only 15,000 Virginia big-eared bats in existence — up from 3,500 in 1979, but far below historic levels — risking even a few is no small matter. The project also cost $300,000, a big chunk of the $1.9 million allotted by Congress for research on white nose syndrome, or WNS.
In the three years since its original detection in an upstate New York cave, WNS has spread south as far as Tennessee, exterminating bat colony after colony with almost total efficiency. The disease appears to be caused by a fungal infection that rouses bats from hibernation, leaving them weak and unable to find food.
There is no known cure, and scientists say that many cave-dwelling bat species — including the little brown bat, the most common bat in North America — could be extinct in a decade. They call the bat die-off “the most precipitous decline of North American wildlife in recorded history” (.pdf).
Early in 2009, WNS was found in a West Virginia cave where Virginia big-eared bats lived. Though infected bats belonged to other species, the discovery was frightening. The Fish and Wildlife Service decided to found a captive colony.
“There were many scientists who didn’t think it would work at all, and are philosophically opposed to captive bat populations anyway. The other school of thought is that desperate times call for desperate measures,” said Peter Youngbaer, WNS liaison for the National Speleological Society. “If this species was going to get WNS, and if you didn’t start an intervention now, you’d never have a chance.”
Unlike fruit-eating bats, insect-eating bats like the Virginia big-eared are notoriously difficult to raise in captivity. Accustomed to catching insects on the wing, many of the bats refused to eat worms from pans. Stressed from relocation and habituated to cave-specific temperatures and humidity, others developed runaway bacterial infections. Despite constant attention from researchers, 29 of the bats died.
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Deadly bat disease bad news for people too
By Geoff Hamill Staff Writer Mar 11, 2010
A deadly bat disease has arrived in Pocahontas County (WV) with the potential to devastate bat populations, alter the ecosystem and impact the economy.
Scientists named the disease White Nose Syndrome (WNS) because of a white fungus found on the face and bodies of infected bats. The disease is not believed to affect humans, pets or livestock, but has resulted in bat colony mortality rates as high as 90%. According to the Ozark Underground Laboratory, survivors are often crippled and die during the next summer or next hibernation period.
Compounding the problem, bats have a very low reproduction rate for animals their size. Most bats in northeastern North America have only one or two pups a year and many females do not breed until their second year.
First discovered near Albany, New York, in 2006, WNS now has been confirmed in Massachusetts, New Jersey, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Tennessee and West Virginia. The cause of the disease remains a mystery to researchers, who have not discovered if the fungus causes the disease or is merely a symptom.
On Tuesday, Jack Wallace, wildlife biologist with the West Virginia Department of Natural Resources, confirmed that bats collected at a cave on Drop Mountain in Pocahontas County tested positive for the disease. The discovery represents the first time the disease has been confirmed west of the Allegheny Front.
Another suspect bat from a cave in Greenbrier County has been sent for testing and results are expected soon. Wallace said the Greenbrier County bat appeared to have the fungus on its wings.
The loss of bats in affected areas is likely to result in more bugs, affecting both recreation and agriculture.
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Bat-killing fungus may have spread to Md.
Signs of white nose syndrome found in Alleghany caveBy Frank D. Roylance Baltimore Sun reporter March 11, 2010
Biologists have found what they believe is the first evidence that Maryland bats are now infected with white nose syndrome, a deadly fungal disease that has killed more than a million hibernating bats since 2006, devastating colonies from New England to Virginia.
A state biologist conducting a bat survey Friday found dead and weakened bats in a cave on private property near Cumberland, the Department of Natural Resources reported Wednesday.
About three-quarters of the winged mammals had the telltale white fungus on their muzzles and other exposed skin.
"It's likely going to kill a majority of them before spring," said Dan Feller, the western region DNR biologist who found them. Typically, once the disease is established in a colony, 90 percent of the bats are gone by the second year.
The dead bats, and samples of the fungus, have been sent to the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wis., for tests. Results are expected in several weeks.
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Fungus is killing bats at an alarming rate A mysterious white fungus is appearing in populations throughout the Northeast. Can bats be saved?
Sunday, March 07, 2010 By John Hayes, Pittsburgh Post-GazetteMILROY, Pa. -- Deep in a cramped cave gouging into a Mifflin County hillside, three young biologists crawled and twisted through a narrow passage, lifting their head lamps toward a sloped stone ceiling that should have been carpeted with hibernating bats.
Illuminated in fidgety circles of light, a few bats dangled alone, while others hung in small clusters. Many were dead -- rock-hard lumps stuck to the stone or littering the cave floor. Light and heat from the head lamps slowly awakened the living. Tiny eyes blinked, wings slowly unfolded and teeth bared at the intruders. Most had tell-tale white mustaches of fungus, unmistakable clues in a biological mystery unfolding throughout the Northeast.
Four years ago, folks near Albany, N.Y., reported bats lying dead in the snow or flying around on winter days when they should have been hibernating. Biologists exploring nearby caves discovered hundreds of bats that had died in hibernation with a curious white fungus on their mouths and noses.
Following an otherwise normal spring and summer, bats were again found dead in hibernation, dusted with the same unidentified fungus, in a range that had spread northeast to New England and south into eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In well-known hibernation sites that had been studied for decades, researchers found dead bats by the thousands -- in some caves, mortality rates were 80 to 90 percent.
The outbreak was given a name: White-nose Syndrome.
"For a lot of people, bats are creepy," said DeeAnn Reeder, a biology professor at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, in central Pennsylvania, where much of the research into White-nose is taking place.
"They're like little flying mice and [people] are afraid they'll get in their hair. But bats play a vital role in the environment. Without them our lives would be quite different."
Bats eat bugs. In summer, female bats of some species can eat their body weight in insects in a single night. No one knows the actual number of bats or bugs, but most of the night-flying insects eaten by bats are pests of forests, agriculture and gardens, and some carry diseases infectious to humans. Without the vital buffer of bats in the food chain, insect populations could soar.
At a strategy conference in Austin, Texas, last year, the small cadre of scientists researching the syndrome agreed that much about the abrupt mass deaths remained a mystery. The previously unknown cold-climate fungus -- it was named Geomyces destructans because of what it's doing to bats -- is similar to fungi common in Europe; it may have existed naturally but undiscovered in North American caverns.
It is not dangerous to humans, pets or farm animals, but has impacted six nonmigratory species: big brown, little brown, small-footed, northern long-eared, eastern pipistrel and the federally protected Indiana bat. Migratory, tree-roosting bats are rarely affected.
The bats appear to die of starvation during hibernation, but scientists still cannot confirm that the fungus is the primary cause of death. What they know: White-nose Syndrome is spreading fast, but not uniformly. It leapfrogs from affected areas to popular recreational caving sites, leading researchers to suspect that microscopic fungal spores get onto clothing worn by cavers, who unintentionally carry it to new sites. Some researchers speculate that European cavers may have innocently brought the spores to America, where native bats have no natural resistance. Others suspect spread of the fungus is more likely a naturally occurring anomaly.
In three years since the onset of the outbreak, more than a million bats have died in the Northeast. They would have eaten 694 tons of insects, and scientists are worried about the impact of the sudden break in the food chain. In a report released at the conclusion of last year's conference in Austin, scientists described White-nose Syndrome as "devastating," responsible for "the most precipitous decline of North American wildlife in recorded history."
"The truth is bats are dying off so fast we might not be able to save them," said Dr. Reeder, who participated in last year's conference. "The little brown bat, the most common bat in North America, could be extinct and other species endangered in seven to 30 years.
"Our work here may save them farther west, but we are not going to be able to save the bats in Pennsylvania. What that means to us we don't know, but it can't be good."
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Bat-killing fungus' spread raises concerns in Alabama
By Thomas Spencer -- The Birmingham News
February 22, 2010, 5:30AM
The discovery in Tennessee of bats afflicted with white-nose syndrome -- the deadly disease that has killed a million bats from New Hampshire to Virginia -- has heightened worries that it could spread to Alabama bat populations.
"We are very, very concerned about this and its potential impact on bats in this state, particularly our endangered bats, the Indiana bat and the gray bat," said Keith Hudson, a wildlife biologist with the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.
Indiana bats already have been affected by the syndrome, but until now white-nose syndrome had not spread into gray bat territory. With the jump into Tennessee, it has. At hard-hit caves in the Northeast, 95 percent of the bat population has died from the disease within two years.
Alabama's Fern Cave is the largest known hibernation cave for gray bats. Between 800,000 and 1 million gray bats winter in the Jackson County Cave, representing 85 percent to 90 percent of the species' population in Alabama.
"North Alabama is gray bat central," Hudson said. "If it ever gets in there, it is going to devastate that species."----
Biologists search for answers to bat disease issue White-nose syndrome treatment proves tricky
* By Morgan Simmons
* Posted February 21, 2010 at 11:20 p.m.JELLICO, Tenn. - It was snowing in the mountains of Campbell County. Icicles hung from the mouth of the cave. But deep inside where the bats hibernated, the temperate was a comfortable 54 degrees. Clusters of tri-colored bats and little brown bats hung from the limestone ceiling, well within arm's reach. Some were covered with water droplets caused by condensation. Illuminated by the head lamps, their fur sparkled like costume jewelry. Cory Holliday of The Nature Conservancy and Sterling Daniels of the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency were checking the cave for evidence of white-nose syndrome, a lethal bat disease that has spread rapidly through nine states since it was discovered in eastern New York just three winters ago. Before this winter, white-nose syndrome was confirmed as far south as a cave in southwest Virginia. Biologists knew it wouldn't be long until the disease made the short jump into northeastern Tennessee, and recent developments proved them right. Last week, the first record of white-nose syndrome in Tennessee was found on two tri-colored bats collected in a cave in Sullivan County.
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Deadly Bat Fungus Spreading in U.S. White-nose syndrome confirmed farther south and west
Ker Than
for National Geographic News
Published February 16, 2010
A deadly fungus responsible for tens of thousands of bat deaths in the eastern United States is on the move, according to recent tests that confirmed the killer's presence in Tennessee. White-nose syndrome, which appears in hibernating bats, has been linked to a cold-loving fungus found on the wings, ears, and muzzles of infected bats. Until now, the disease has appeared only in caves along the northeastern seaboard from Vermont to Virginia (see a U.S. map). But today the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency announced that two tricolored bats—commonly known as pips—have been found with white-nose syndrome in Worley's Cave in Sullivan County. "I think this will be furthest south that white-nose syndrome has been detected in the United States, and it may be the furthest west as well," said Gina Hancock, a spokesperson for the nonprofit Nature Conservancy, which has been tracking the disease. The cave where the two infected bats were found is only about 65 miles (105 kilometers) from a confirmed infection site in Virginia—well within flying range for the pips. "There's nothing extraordinary about the jump from Virginia to the Tennessee site, except we're disappointed to see it happen," said Alan Hicks, a bat expert at the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation who was not involved in the Tennessee tests.----
Solving the mystery of the dying bats
By Sandy Bauers Inquirer Staff Writer | January 26, 2010
Deep in a cave in Mifflin County, Pa., surrounded by icicles and tilted slabs of rock, DeeAnn Reeder shone her headlamp on a tiny bat. It was dead. Cradling it in gloved hands, she stretched out its wings, fanned out its minuscule toes, and examined its snout. "I've seen worse," Reeder whispered, "but, boy . . . he's just covered in fungus."
The Bucknell biology professor studied the bat. She knew it was white-nose syndrome, first discovered three years ago in a cave near Albany, N.Y. Bats that should have been hibernating inside were dead on the ground outside. Since then, a million bats have died in the Northeast. Some caves have had 99 percent mortality. In a growing what-done-it mystery, white-nose spread last year to Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
The latest models predict the little brown bat, the most numerous in the nation, could be extinct in 7 to 30 years. "That's incredibly fast," said Greg Turner, the Pennsylvania Game Commission's endangered-mammal specialist. "Unprecedented is the word.""Humans have done a pretty good job of killing a lot of animals, like the buffalo," he said, "but nothing like this has ever been recorded. It's pretty bleak. That's the only way to say it." The bat decline echoes that of the world's frogs. And colony collapse disorder among honeybees. Some suggest links to pesticides or cascading effects of an altered environment.
White-nose isn't just about bats. It's also about bugs. A lactating female can eat her body weight in insects in a single night. Scientists estimate the million bats lost so far would have eaten 694 tons of insects just last year. Their diet includes crop pests and mosquitoes, which can spread West Nile disease and equine encephalitis. Many of the bats so widespread in the summer here - living in attics, barns, and steeples - winter in caves such as the one in Mifflin County, said Scott Bearer, a bat expert with the Nature Conservancy, which owns the cave.
"Bats have a real value in the environment. This is an ecological disaster," said Jeremy Coleman, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's national white-nose syndrome coordinator. "If we lose them, I suspect that people will learn to appreciate them too late."
Last Thursday, the national nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity filed emergency petitions asking the U.S. government to close all federal caves because humans entering them without disinfecting their gear possibly could spread the fungus. The center also asked that two of the less-common species affected be listed for protection under the Endangered Species Act.
"I think Pennsylvania bats are done," Reeder said. White-nose affects six of the state's eight species. "Big browns will probably be OK. Our tree bats will probably be OK," she said. "Everybody else is going to go."
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Environmental group asks Interior Department to close all caves to save bats
By Kim McGuire | January 21, 2010
St. Louis Post-DispatchThe Center for Biological Diversity has filed a petition with the U.S. Department of Interior asking the federal agency to close all caves under their jurisdiction to help prevent the spread of white nose syndrome, a disease responsible for killing off thousands of bats in the Northeast.
If granted, caves could be closed on lands managed by the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Land Management and others.
Who knows whether the Department will approve the petition, but federal land managers have already taken proactive steps to thwarting the disease. For example, we told you last spring how the Forest Service had voluntarily closed caves in its Midwest region, which includes those in Illinois and Missouri.
To date, the disease has not been found in Missouri, though crews continue to survey caves throughout the state.
EcoSpeak ran across a great website maintained by the National Speleological Society that lists the current cave closings. For all you cavers who were thinking about heading south to Arkansas to get around the closures, think again. That state recently closed caves in parts of the Buffalo National River (one of my favorite floats in Ozarks)
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White Nose Swings at European Bats
A fungus linked to widespread destruction of U.S. bat colonies has been found on a thriving French bat.
By: David Richardson | January 17, 2010
The newly identified white-nose syndrome fungus, Geomyces destructans, found in devastated bat colonies along the eastern United States has been confirmed in Europe but, surprisingly, in an apparently healthy bat.Marvin Moriarty/USFWS
The newly identified fungus found in devastated bat colonies along the eastern United States has been confirmed in Europe but, surprisingly, in an apparently healthy bat.
During intensive monitoring last March of places bats hibernate, researchers near Perigueux, France, found a mouse-eared bat with white powdery patches on its body. A research team headed by bat expert Sbastien J. Puechmaille of University College Dublin reported in December's online Emerging Infectious Disease Journal that analysis of swabs of fungal growths from the bat's nose confirmed Geomyces destructans, the fungus that apparently has whisked away more than a million bats from caves in the Northeast United States.
But the French bat was alive.
Encouraging Evidence
Although sleeplessness and starvation are known to accompany white-nose syndrome's symptoms in American bats, researchers reported that the French bat "was in good condition," weighing 24 grams, which, they write, was "more than the expected average for a post-hibernating bat [of its species] despite having Geomyces destructans growth on its snout."Three possibilities explain this, researchers say; the first being that the bat represents the vanguard of a dangerous infectious wave of white-nose that now threatens all European bats. But they hedge this ghastly scenario against the possibility that the fungus may not be the cause of death in white-nose syndrome, as suspected, but merely an opportunistic infection afflicting bats already hurting from some yet undiscovered malady.
But Alan Hicks, the New York state wildlife biologist who discovered white-nose syndrome, says the evidence seems to line up in favor of the researchers' third, and more palatable, scenario: Geomyces is not as deadly to European bats as it is to those in North America.
He said that the bat's apparent good health, and that there have been no reports of massive die-offs attributed to the fungus among European bats, offers encouraging news.
Plus, the fungus may not be new to Europe. "Going as far back as the 1980s, there have been reports in the literature of bats in Europe with white powdery growths on their skin," Hicks said. While he says it is impossible after the fact to confirm the causal agent in the earlier sightings, it would be reasonable in light of recent findings to suspect the fungus.
David Blehert, the U.S. Geological Survey microbiologist who first isolated the fungus in 2008, agrees. He cited recent reports of bats with confirmed infestations of G. destructans captured in Germany, Hungary and Switzerland, along with photographic evidence of the fungus from the Czech Republic. Blehert said he is currently working with the Broad Institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to sequence the fungus's entire genome, which will permit scientists to construct a history of its origin and travels.
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White-nose syndrome the darkest of nights for bats
Carl Herzog | For the Poughkeepsie Journal | January 10, 2010
Most of us rarely see bats. When we do, it's usually as they feed on flying insects in the fading light of a warm summer evening. But the depths of winter are prime time for the scientists who track bat populations. It is then that most species are easiest to count, as they gather in caves and mines to sleep away the winter.
In recent years, though, winter bat study has focused almost exclusively on trying to understand a malady known as white-nose syndrome that has resulted in mass bat mortalities across New York state and, increasingly, many other locations.
Appearance of a puzzleWhite-nose syndrome is actually a collection of symptoms, the most prominent a white fungus that grows on the muzzles, wings and tail membranes of all six of New York's hibernating bat species. This fungus is probably not merely a symptom, but the cause of the problem, although no one yet knows for sure.
The missing piece of the puzzle is how it kills. Evidence suggests the fungus probably interferes with the bats' ability to hibernate, making them burn up fat reserves much faster than normal and causing them to starve to death in midwinter.
The first hints of the problem appeared in January 2007, when abnormally large numbers of bats turned up in the immediate vicinity of caves in the Albany area. Numerous residents reported finding bats both alive and dead, and a routine cave survey by the New York Department of Environmental Conservation at a site near Albany later that winter turned up thousands of bat carcasses.
About half of the survivors had a curious white fungus growing on them. Further inquiries identified five similarly affected caves in Albany and Schoharie counties, all within a 10-mile radius.
At the time, no other areas exhibited the problem, and researchers had no real idea what was going on. Queries sent to bat experts across North America revealed none of them had ever seen anything like this. Everyone was concerned, but no one knew what to expect.
With the arrival of spring, bats normally leave the caves and mines and fly to their chosen places in the summer landscape to give birth, raise young and live the most active part of their lives. Little information is collected on how bat populations fare at this time, so it wasn't until winter 2008 that the next solid information on what was happening came to light. That winter, some of the original five sites were re-checked and each exhibited further bat decline. In addition, the problem had by then spread to many other sites, including some in Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut. This winter brought more of the same, with nine states as far away as Virginia now affected.
Accurate information is sparse, but where available it shows five of six cave-bat species have experienced losses of 60 percent to 90 percent. The apparent mortality has increased each year since the problem first appeared. Researchers expect that trend to continue, and there is little if any evidence that survivors have any inherent resistance to white-nose syndrome.
The problem has spread at a stunning rate. It has turned up in caves and mines people have not visited for years, suggesting bats are carrying it to new areas. Bats are very social creatures that frequently come into close physical contact with each other. It is also possible people have been inadvertently transporting white-nose syndrome, which has prompted the closing of many caves to human use and establishment of precautions to prevent spread by scientists studying the problem.
Taking more proactive steps, however, has been a challenge. Wildlife managers have long recognized repeatedly disturbing bats in winter causes them to burn up fat reserves and suffer the same fate experienced by bats with white-nose syndrome. Even with this restriction, experiments are under way attempting to prove whether the fungus is the cause of the problem, determine how it is being transmitted and develop possible treatment regimes. Researchers across eastern North America are monitoring the malady's spread and the magnitude of its impact.
The problem's severity in recently affected areas to our south is expected to develop in a similar manner to what New York and New England have experienced. Further spread to new regions seems inevitable and will probably expose more bat species to white-nose syndrome, including two species already considered endangered.
An effective treatment, if one is even possible, will likely take years to develop, and longer still to make a difference for New York's bats.
Since most bats give birth to a single pup per year, population growth is slow even under favorable conditions. This means it's unlikely populations here will recover to pre-2007 levels in the next 40 years.
Realistically, the Northeast bat community has probably been forever changed but not eradicated.
One cave-bat species, the big brown bat, and three others that fly south for winter instead of hibernating, may escape the problem.
And who knows what the future will bring? Bats have abilities unmatched in the animal kingdom, a fact that has served them well for a very long time. One way or another, they may yet figure out how to survive this darkest of nights.
(Carl Herzog is a wildlife ecologist for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.)
